Comments on: How To Create A Strong Password You Can Remember

By: Original Blogger

Original Blogger — Sun, 24 May 2009 12:17:50 +0000

What’s your take on creating a base passwords? Is it a good or a bad idea?

By: Splendor

Splendor — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:14:32 +0000

I like the acronym idea.

By: Oscar79

Oscar79 — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:53:32 +0000

First of all, I have to many passwords to different sites, it is quite hard to remember them all. I believe that picking a password is not that hard, the difficult thing is to remember them all. bank card, mobile phone, work codes, e-mail account etc…

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:40:57 +0000

I am definitely going to put this to use. Great information!!

By: eric

eric — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:18:03 +0000

As much as I like the advice, I leave all of this work up to my super Mac program: 1Password!

Seriously, it’s the best thing since slice bread. I create a master password encrypted on my computer and the program generates and saves all of the random passwords on any site I need. (And the passwords it comes up with are ridiculously hard.)

Beautiful.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:44:51 +0000

So many people do not make secure passwords and this article gives a great overview on how to make one. It’s tough to remember so many passwords especially when some sites don’t allow you to have special characters in your passwords and others do.

By: Rajeev Singh

Rajeev Singh — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:42:52 +0000

Great tips on password… I like to keep a unique password for each of my accounts and this password is difficult to guess. I use alph numeric combination in my password.
Serves me well!!

By: thomas

thomas — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:49:43 +0000

replacing letters with numbers is good. Another trick is using the same root word – like m0v13 and then going through the numbers to add at the beginning or end, so m0vi301, m0v1302, etc.

I just hate how some sites (yes you AMEX) limit the length to a count smaller than the minimum of others. Really messes up my consistency.

By: Penelope Pince

Penelope Pince — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:57:23 +0000

My cousin works in IT and networking and taught me the same trick. This is a well put-together post; I gave it a StumbleUpon review.

By: Matt Jabs

Matt Jabs — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:53:40 +0000

I don’t have to use passwords.

I just have Chuck Norris standing guard over all my personal information.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:12:21 +0000

Pick a prefix for all your passwords, then make a password to add to it. Make your prefix harder to guess with leet, shifting, randomization, whatever. You’ll remember it because you use it all over. Then the second part of your password can be a little easier but it’s important to always change it.

This way you’re protected against dictionary attacks because you have a long password. Say your prefix is 5 characters and you choose an 8 character password, you’re up to 13 which is longer than most passwords. If someone gets your password to one site, they won’t be able to guess the password to another because the second part is always different. Even if they have your password to two sites they would not be able to get into a third so long as your second password is sufficiently unique. Also, since your first part is unique to you it is safer to use passwords that are site related (which isn’t a great idea, but it’s an especially bad idea to do alone).

The real downside to this is that if you type your password around someone a lot they could catch on to your prefix, leaving only the weaker second part to guess. If using this means you can have unique passwords to every site then you’ll be better off than most.

Another idea is to secure your computer as well as you can and use a password manager. Then use randomly generated passwords for your accounts. Make sure that the password to both your password manager and your email is strong but memorable, though. You don’t want anyone guessing a single password to get into all your accounts and you need the email to retrieve those impossible to remember passwords in case you lose access to your password manager.

By: barry

barry — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:23:56 +0000

I have so many passwords, there is no feasible way I could remember them all if I made each both Strong AND Unique.

By: Travis

Travis — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:58:53 +0000

There are some great ideas here. Too bad i have so many passwords it is going to take forever to change them all over

By: MLR

MLR — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:28:23 +0000

I don’t go AS secure, but I do a little bit of password security.

Random item + random item + 3 numbers + symbol

eg StoneHammer725!
eg WalletKeg257?

It could be more secure, but it is more secure than a lot of people do I suppose.

By: Berkshire

Berkshire — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:12:04 +0000

As a software engineer I deal with data security on a daily basis. The system I use for my passwords I am quite fond of and it is very straight forward.

In general it is a good idea to change your passwords over time. I do not have a hard time remembering a new number sequence every few months…so maybe that is why this works well for me.

Sample password:
022109.Xy

The first six digits are actually a date (random and arbitrary, changes with time). It can be represented in any format (this one is ddmmyy but it could easily be yymmdd or any combination).

Then a separator symbol (. in this case)

Then your initials (X first initial y last initial). Note the difference in case which can also be reversed (xY).

And that is how I make up my passwords!