Create An Easy To Remember Base Password
You can use several techniques how to create a good password that you will not forget. Here are some suggestions.
- Randomly replace letters with numbers, e.g. flirt becomes fl1r7.
- Pick a sentence, i.e. your passphrase, and reduce it to first letters of each word only, e.g. “Everything I Do I Do It For You” becomes EIDIDIFY.
- Take a word and reverse spell it, e.g. neighborhood becomes doohrobhgien.
These examples are not very safe. While none of the words can be found in a dictionary, they are still failing other characteristics of a safe password. Try to find a combination that allows you to incorporate all characteristics.
The base password I’m going to use for this password is “E1d_1D!4Y:)“.
Note that my base password meets all of the above criteria. It cannot be found in a dictionary, it contains special characters, a mix of upper and lower case letters, it is 11 characters long, and cannot be guessed based on my personal information (unless you suspect that I like Bryan Adams).
Be Creative & Think Out Of The Box!
A computer may calculate faster than you can recognize patterns a lot quicker than any human brain, but one thing it cannot do is be creative. That is your great advantage over hacker tools!
As you see, in my password I replaced some letters with numbers or special characters. However, I didn’t use a stiff set of rules. I replaced the “I” with a “1″ or a “!”. Using rules for replacing characters, i.e. always replacing an “a” with the “@” symbol will weaken your password.
Here are some ideas how you can make it even harder for a hacker to crack your password:
- Don’t use common substitutions, e.g. @ for A/a.
- When you have recurring letters within your password, mix your substitutions, e.g. 8 or ( for B/b.
- Have a word and touch type it with your fingers in the etpmh (wrong) location. Keep in mind that you may switch keyboard types.
- Pick a pattern on your keyboard and type it with alternating use of the SHIFT key, e.g. Xdr%6tfCvgz/
How To Create A Good Password That You Will Not Forget
4. Useful Tips
Before discussing the methodologies of how to make a strong and easy-to-remember password, let us have a look at general useful tips which are the cornerstones of any methodology of making a strong password. There are many references – on MakeUseOf and the wider Web – that cover this topic. Here I am trying to go over the most common suggestions.
IMPORTANT: your password should be at least 8 characters long, and it is highly recommended that it’s 12 characters or more.
Select a password that contains letters (both uppercase and lowercase), numbers and symbols.
| Category | Example |
| Uppercase letters | A, B, C, D |
| Lowercase letters | a, b, c, d |
| Numbers | 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 |
| Symbols | @ # $ & * : ; . ? / |
Do not use names or words found in the dictionary.
5. How to Make a Strong Password
“Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.” ~ Clifford Stoll
Before we go any further, keep in mind the following: The stronger your password, the more protected your account or computer is from being compromised or hacked. You should make sure you have a unique and strong password for each of your accounts.
Indeed, there are many articles and suggestions on how to choose strong and easy-to-remember passwords for your various online accounts. Most of these suggestions or methods, if not all of them, agree on the rule of creating passwords based on a mnemonic, such as an easily remembered phrase. However, they have some minor differences in the way they combine the useful tips mentioned above by adding some layers of security to make the password stronger. Let’s summarize these methods, for easy reference.
5.1 Mozilla’s Methodology
Mozilla has published a very useful article, including an animated video, titled “Create secure passwords to keep your identity safe”.. The ideas, in a nutshell, are:
Pick up a familiar phrase or quote, for example, “May the force be with you” and then abbreviate it by taking the first letter of each word, so it becomes “mtfbwy”
Add some special characters on either sides of the word to make it extra strong (like #mtfbwy!)
And then associate it with the website by adding a few characters from the website name into the original password as either a suffix or prefix. So the new password for Amazon could become #mtfbwy!AmZ, #mtfbwy!FbK for Facebook and so on.
5.2 Microsoft’s Tips
Microsoft offers an a lot of security information, which forces you to think seriously about the strength of your passwords. Microsoft’s tips for creating strong passwords are very similar to Mozilla’s tips, but also highlight four areas to take into consideration; Length, Complexity, Variation and Variety.
We have already explored the first two. For variation, Microsoft has emphasized the importance of changing your password regularly (about every three months). Variety is mainly about avoiding password reuse, which leaves all accounts vulnerable if one is compromised. A study done by researchers in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory shows that the rate of comparing stolen login credentials (hashed passwords) for two different sites was as high as 50 percent. So never ever use the same password twice – try to always have different passwords for different accounts for websites or computers.
5.3 Google’s Safe Password Methodology
A part of Google’s recent advertising campaign for online safety, “Good to Know”, is instructions for picking a safe password for each of your accounts. The idea in brief, as Sara Adams mentioned in this short video, is to choose a sentence or line (that you can easily remember) from your favorite song, film etc. Then take the first letter of each word and then try to mix it with numbers and special characters (symbols) and mix letters to constitute your strong but easy-to-remember password. The more unusual the phrase you choose the better. “Good to Know” is a great rich educational campaign and resource that mainly aims to spread awareness of online safety and privacy. Keep your online accounts secure is another amazing video that shows you how to boost your security.
5.4 Putting it all together
While generating a password you should follow two rules; Length and Complexity. Let’s start by using the following sentence: “I like to read MakeUseOf blog everyday”. Let’s turn this phrase into a password.
Take the first letter from each word: IltrMUObe. I will take the letter “d” by considering everyday as two words and in order to lengthen the password. So it will become like IltrMUObed.
Now increase its strength by adding symbols and numbers:
20I!ltr.MUO_bed?13
OMG! What is this difficult password?!! It is impossible to remember and who is going to add numbers and symbols like this? Wait a minute… I did not add any numbers and I did not put the symbols randomly. Let us analyze this password more fully:
20I!ltr.MUO_bed?13
Firstly, 20 and 13 refer to the year, 2013. Secondly, I put a symbol after each three places or characters. What did you notice? Yes, it is a pattern. Design your own special pattern. You may want to use my exact pattern as your base password for most of your online accounts – don’t. Think of your own. But if you would like to go with this option as a base password, then do yourself a favor by rotating portions of your passwords, changing the order, or at the very least using the name of your online account in the password.
20I!ltr.MUO_bed?13Gmail
fb20I!ltr.MUO_bed?13 (for Facebook)
20I!ltr.MUO_bed?13Tw (for Twitter)
2013I!ltr.MUO_bed?Li (for LinkedIn)
That’s one password developing strategy. Let’s keep adding complexity, while also attempting to keep things possible to memorize.
6. Haystacking Your Password
This technique was developed by security guru Steve Gibson, president of Gibson Research Corporation (GRC). Password Haystack is a methodology of making your password extremely difficult to brute force by padding the password with a pattern like (//////) before or/and after your password. Also, Gibson designed a clever interactive calculator, Brute Force Search Space Calculator, which you can use to test the potential of your password. It will show how long it would take for different entities to crack your password, while showing you why your password is either weak or strong based on some mathematical calculations. So how to use this technique?
Here’s how it works:
• Come up with a password, but try to make it as a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols
• Come up with a pattern/scheme you can remember, such as the first letter of each word from an excerpt of your favorite song or a set of symbols like (…../////)
• Use this pattern and repeat using it several times (padding your password)
Let’s have an example of this:
Password:
I.lto!MUO2012
By applying this approach, the password becomes a Haystacked Password:
…../////I.lto!MUO2012…../////
So for your Facebook account, the password might be:
fb…../////I.lto!MUO2012…../////
Further examples of this technique:
818818818JaNe!!
JaNe9999999999//
You get the idea.
It is very easy to insert your password in a container (or a haystack). Now, let us test the strength of the Facebook account’s password by using the brute force search space calculator:
