Choosing a good, complex, and memorable password can be tough.
Many of us like to reuse the same password, or passwords, over and over again rather than try to remember dozens of different password for dozens of different sites. Sometimes we run into problems when a site has a particularly stingy set of rules for password creation, and we have to come up with a new password, and we usually don’t remember it for the next time we want to use that site. I went through a five month streak with Verizon Wireless, where I changed my password every month when I went to check my bill online and had forgotten the old password.
So I’ve come up with a system to help you come up with a password to use consistently that meets many of the requirements, as well as being a strong password. You should still be careful with your password, and change it whenever you feel it necessary. One of the biggest ways people’s accounts get exploited is not because of password strength, but because they write it down for everyone to see, or submit it into forms in plain text, or save it on a public computer.
You want to find a 6-8 letter string of characters with numbers and letters. The string should not begin with a number, and should not contain any words within it.
Pick a letter as the first character. Say ‘t’.
Pick a number as the second character. Say ‘3′.
Pick a ,four, five, or six letter word, and purposely misspell it. You can even use a word you commonly misspell, or typo, anyway. It’ll satisfy the ‘no words’ criteria while still being letters you can remember. Say ‘ctach’.
Put them together and you have a fairly easy to remember password that can be used at almost any site out there. ‘t3ctach’
I like to make my string seven characters, this way if I accidentally lock myself out of an account, or my password expires, I can simply add a ‘1′ to the end of my string and have a good chance of remembering it, without having to come up with a new password.
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