How to Make Strong Passwords That Are Easy to Remember
In an age of increasingly sophisticated hacking techniques, as well as increased exposure of people’s information online, it is unfortunate to see that even the most basic form of privacy protection, the password, is not taken seriously by so many. Nearly one in ten passwords online come from the twenty most popular passwords.
Phase 1: Making a Strong Password
Making a strong password is the first chronological step, because the whole point of making a password is to make it a lot more difficult for hackers to get through. With that in mind, the first part of creating a strong password is to make it longer than what you are likely used to.
This is for the simple reason that longer passwords decrease the likelihood of the password being randomly cracked. In fact, many sites require that your account with them have passwords of a certain minimum length, say 8 or 12 characters, in order to setup an account. Therefore, it is recommended that you exceed these minimum public requirements by a healthy margin.
The second part is diversifying your password. Indeed, many sites require that you include characters such an uppercase letter, number, and even symbols when making your password. It is advised that you do so in every situation, even though it is not required of you, as this makes for a good outcome down the road.
An optional thing that you might consider doing is creating two-factor authentication for your most important accounts. What this entails is requiring a second layer of security, for example having the program send an authentication code to your cellphone that you need to key in after you have successfully keyed in your password. These tips will help you in creating near bulletproof passwords to protect your privacy.
Phase 2: Making Your Password Memorable
It is one thing to make your password bulletproof, but that will not matter one bit if you are not capable of remembering it when you need to key it in. An equally important aspect of a good password is making it one that is locked down in your head.
One tip for this is to not focus on finding a memorable word, but finding a memorable sentence and taking the first or last letter out of each word to form your password. This sentence might be from a poem you like, or even a sentence of your favorite song. As long as you are able to memorize it, you are on the right track.
Once you have you have strung together your chain of memorable letters, another thing you can do is to make some of the letters uppercase at points that you will remember. You can also add some numbers at the back. This will further enhance the strength of your password, whilst at the same time not add much difficulty for you as far as remembering goes.
A relatively unorthodox method would be for you to create patterns on your keyboard and use the letters the pattern passes over as your password. This is likely only for the visually oriented people out there, but if you are one of those people and it can work for you, there is no reason not to use this technique
Make Stronger Passwords Starting Today
To reiterate, it is becoming increasingly important for people to care about how secure the information they have online is. With surveillance becoming ever more common and sophisticated, it makes all the sense in the world for your passwords to be unique and well thought out. Those who do not care about your safety and well-being will not relent, and neither should you.