Create a Password You Can Remember
Creating passwords that are both safe and memorable get harder and harder as we have to memorize more and more. Combining words, phrases, numbers, and coding them with simple substitutions will ensure that your personal information is safe. One of the most common mistakes in creating a secure password is replacing letters with numbers. While this may stop most people, almost all codebreaking software these days checks these simple switches first. It is important to be able to come up with passwords that are personal enough to remember but varied and complex enough to be secure, so learning how to create appropriate passwords is a crucial skill that you will undoubtedly use often.
Contents
Steps
Using Phrases
- Make a compound word. A smart way to develop an easy-to-remember password is to combine three small words of significance to you, and make a single password. For example, you can use "mydogspot" or "jimswifejane."
- Remember, sheer length is far superior to a shorter but random mix of numbers, letters, and symbols, which will be difficult to remember.
- Connect the first letters of a sentence. Develop a password using the first letters of a sentence or phrase that means something to you - like your national anthem or a slogan you have seen somewhere. "Don't shop for it, Argos it" would become "DsfiAi."
- Choose two words and combine their letters. Choose one letter of the first word and one letter of the second word, and repeating this until you get to the last letter of each word. An example could be:
- Say your most important possessions are house & plane
- Password: hpoluasnee
- Come up with a pass phrase. Length can be a huge advantage to memorization. If your typing is fairly accurate, consider large phrases from a book, speech or movie, such as:
- "It was a dark and stormy night!"
- "My fellow Americans!"
- "Houston, we have a problem."
- The length can provide security even if special symbols are not used. This can help with sites that prevent the use of symbols.
- Make good use of punctuation and capitalization to make a secure pass phrase that complies with common password rules.
Using Codes
- Take a word or phrase and remove the vowels from it. For example, "eat the cheeseburger" becomes "tthchsbrgr".
- Shift your fingers one key out of your normal typing position. If your password doesn't use the Q, A, or Z, you can hit the key to the left of your password. Or to the right if you don't use the P, L, or M. "Speed racer" goes to both sides, but "wikiHow" can become "qujugiq" or "eolojpe". You could also shift up and to the right or left. "wikiHow" becomes "28i8y92" or "39o9u03".
- Use the current year and first three letters of the current month. Then add three letters from, say, your name. In this case, your password might read 2013mayBob. Next month, change it to 2013junBob. It's impossible to have the same password twice or to forget it.
- Combine a date component inside a larger password. This helps when the password needs to change from time to time. But, remember to never use only a date - date-only passwords are at higher risk to being cracked than other choices.
- Choose a favorite passage out of a book and use a word from the passage. For example, if your favorite book is "The Eye of the World", by Robert Jordan, and your favorite passage is the second paragraph on page 168, use a word from that passage. You can use the word Draghkar. So you would put 2Draghkar168. 2 is the paragraph number and 168 is the page number.
Doubling It
- Create your password using one of the above methods. Find a password that you like that incorporates either phrases or codes.
- Double the password without using a space. Just write the password twice without using a space and you'll be all done. Doubling the password will increase its strength, and it won't be any harder to remember than the original password. All you have to remember is that you doubled it!
- Consider doubling an easier password. Length can help the strength of a password, so if you want to use the doubling method, you may be able to choose a slightly easier word and then double it. You'll have less to remember and your password will still be strong!
Using the Bridge Shuffle
- Pick a memorable word or name as well as a number that is the same length as the word.
- Reverse either the number or the word and combine them by alternating letters and numbers into one password. This is similar to doing a bridge shuffling with cards.
- For example, say your word is kitty and your number is your ZIP code, 56789. Just start with the letters and reverse the number, placing them alternately. Thus, k9i8t7t6y5.
- Alternatively, you can make the first letter a capital for greater security.
- You don’t really need to have the letters and numbers the same length; you can just have the letters or numbers in sequence at the end. For example, a shorter number (like your area code or birth year) might look like this, K8i1t8ty or a shorter word like your name “Bob” would look like B9o8b765.
Tips
- If you say the letters or numbers to yourself as you type them you will begin to get a rhythm; this will help you to memorize it.
- You might combine several of these methods and still come up with a truly memorable yet very strong pass phrase.
- The most secure passwords contain lowercase letters, capital letters, numbers, and symbols. Make a standard of holding down shift for the first four characters, or characters three through seven, or whatever you like. You won't have to stop and remember where you inserted that pesky exclamation point or whether you replaced the 's' with '5' or '$' this time.
- Recycle numbers you know but don't use and aren't connected to your current life along with a letter cue. Such as your first phone number with a city code. Ex:NYC2023334444.
- When coming up with a mnemonic sentence, try to make the sentence funny or relevant to yourself. That way you will find it easier to remember the sentence and the password.
Warnings
- Do not use any number that is a matter of record, such as phone, address, and Social Security numbers.
- Make sure you're not reusing passwords. It may be tempting to only use one or two passwords for all of your logins, but you should have distinct passwords for everything, particularly anything linked to personal or financial information.
- Do not use any of the passwords that are shown as examples on this site! Someone might see this too, and might guess yours. Make up your own!
Related Articles
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- Memorize
- Rhyme
- Create a Secure Password
