Generating good passwords that fit all the criteria can seem daunting, especially since it’s so important to create unique passwords for all your accounts. How to create strong and unique passwords The passphrases combine words or sayings into a random mix. The complex ones combine a mixture of numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and special characters. Strong password examplesĮach of the above examples is long and randomized with no discernable pattern, and they are considered very strong passwords. It’s easier for a shrewd hacker to crack a short, complex password than a longer one, even if it’s composed of only lowercase letters. While this is true, password length is more important than complexity, which is why passphrases often make the best passwords. Good password ideas satisfy all three of those requirements.Ĭomplexity is often used as a key criterion of a secure password - meaning that you should use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters as well as numbers and symbols. That means using a minimum of 15 characters, using words or phrases that are hard to guess and difficult to connect to you, and never reusing passwords across multiple accounts. The best, most powerful and strongest passwords are long, hard-to-guess, and unique. There’s no clear threshold for how long passwords should be to be considered “strong.” In general, longer and more complex passwords are stronger and better. That said, the method as described above is perfect for every day, non-sensitive accounts.Making your password longer and more complex increases the number of attempts an attacker would need to successfully crack it - with sufficient complexity you can make your password essentially uncrackable. In these cases, I would recommend creating a very strong and totally unique password, writing it down somewhere, and then keeping that written record in a safe place away from prying eyes. IMPORTANT NOTE: I would not recommend this method for creating passwords for sensitive accounts such as financial institutions, PayPal, etc. This way, you can use essentially the same password for multiple accounts and easily remember the password for each individual site. Your password would then be e223-PWM-92y: Say the registration number is 223-PWM-92 and we’ll use an eBay account as the example. Let’s try that again this time with a longer registration number. Note how the addition of just one extra lower case letter massively increases the strength of the password. It’s up to you how you split the initials for sites with more than one word in the title but, in this case, I’m going to split with one initial at the beginning and two initials at the end. Let’s try another, this time for Daves Computer Tips. Let’s now submit that password to My1 Login’s password tester and see how it rates: Even with that short registration number, that’s nine characters including both upper case and lower case letters, numbers, and a special character. For example, if I were creating an Amazon account, my password would then be a238-KXWn. I then add the first letter of the site name for which I am creating an account at the beginning of the registration number and the last letter of the site name at the end of the registration number. The more numbers and letters the better but three of each plus a special character is enough to create very strong passwords. Here in Australia, in most states, registration numbers consist of just three letters, a hyphen, and three numbers. Of course, personalized plates are an entirely different matter altogether. In fact, I guarantee if you were to ask, even your closest friends or family will not know your motor vehicle registration number. The number is unique to you and not known by very many people. Most people own a car and, even if you can’t remember your registration number, the car is usually somewhere close by. Create Strong Yet Easily Remembered PasswordsĪt the heart of my system is your motor vehicle registration number. I am by no means an expert but I do believe my system is perfect for most people. Every expert seems to have a personal recommendation for how to create strong yet easy to remember passwords. However, some people are not fond of password managers or struggle to come to terms with them. I am using the free edition of Bitwarden and highly recommend it. I urge everyone to use a password manager which will not only remember strong passwords for you but, in most cases, also help you create strong passwords. Creating strong passwords is not at all difficult, it’s the remembering them part that causes most grief. In this day and age, strong passwords are an integral part of security and it’s a sad fact that many people are still using weak passwords, as well as using the exact same password for multiple accounts.
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