Topic: Tips & Tricks
Creating Secure Passwords
Some tips about creating a secure password:
1. Never use any word that can be found in any dictionary (even a foreign language dictionary).
2. Use a combination of letters and numbers with the numbers interspersed between the letters. You can use a word but break it up with numbers so that it's not a complete word anymore, for example:
d19ai72sy
So that's daisy 1972 but broken up so that someone can't use a dictionary program to hack it. The word and the number can be something easy to remember, a favorite pet's name and your birth year or the year you got married or whatever. Another idea would be to reverse the numbers, make it d27ai91sy or ys27ia91d or y2s7i9a1d or flip the syllables, sy19dai72, you get the idea, it's still a word and a date that you can remember but it's not recognizable to anyone else.
3. DON'T use the same password for *everything!* :-) Come with some easy to remember ones (but still combos of letters and numbers) and use those for certain things, come up with more difficult ones, a word that no-one else would know, something random and a random bunch of numbers interspersed for more important things like bank accounts and such. DON'T use your atm password for your online banking (unless your bank doesn't give you a choice).
I was once at a friend's house and he was showing me his new computer and it came up with the login screen and since I was sitting there he told me his password, but it was such a jumble of letters and numbers that had no meaning to me, I couldn't remember any of it ten seconds later even tho I'd typed it in, now that's a good password! (granted, if I'd had a photographic memory, I might have remembered it, but for the ordinary person, it worked.)