Chances are, your passwords are not very good. Chances are even greater that you use one password over and over again, with minor variations. Did you know that a good hacker could probably figure out your password in just a matter of minutes and then gain access to: your bank account, your credit card, your stock trading website, your email, twitter, facebook…
A strong password is defined by the webopedia as:
(strâng pas´wërd) (n.) A password that is difficult to detect by both humans and computer programs, effectively protecting data from unauthorized access. A strong password consists of at least six characters (and the more characters, the stronger the password) that are a combination of letters, numbers and symbols (@, #, $, %, etc.) if allowed. Passwords are typically case-sensitive, so a strong password contains letters in both uppercase and lowercase. Strong passwords also do not contain words that can be found in a dictionary or parts of the user’s own name.
Recently, I’ve started making a good effort to create strong passwords. I’ll be the first to admit that strong passwords are a pain in the neck. They’re long and you have to remember them! However, I’ve found a good scheme that works for me and I think will work for you too.
This is what I do. I take a song that I like and won’t forget, find a section of the lyrics, and take the first letter of each word to make up my strong password. So, here’s an example password that could be used: Hbda,Hbd2u! This password is complex because it is long, uses special characters (the ! and the ,) and has a mix of upper and lower case letters. And it looks hard, doesn’t it? But it’s really not! It’s just the end of the song “Happy Birthday”. How simple is that? “Happy birthday dear anyone, Happy birthday to you!” Piece of cake, right?
Now, think of a song or two and start making your passwords strong!
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