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Saturday, August 13, 2011

How To Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily



With all the hacking in the news at the moment, lots of people are asking, how do I create a secure password, to keep my email account/computer etc, secure and protected from unwanted intrusion.
Below is a quick guide to creating a secure password.
The top most common passwords are;

  1. qwerty
  2. god
  3. 12345
  4. password
  5. letmein
  6. Sex
  7. Peoples Names e.g. Thomas, James, Sarah, Graham, Claire.
  8. Pet Names. E.g. whiskers, woof.
  9. Sport Clubs E.g. Arsenal or the Red Socks,
  10. TV show names or characters. E.g. rachaelgreen, xfiles, mulder,
  11. Movie names or characters. E.g. tomcruise, sexandthecity, j amesbond etc.
  12. Animals E.g. Monkey, Tiger, Horse, Dog, Cat, Pooch, Whiskers etc.
The above password examples are the first that a hacker or one of their password sniffer programs will try to crack your account.
To create a password that will protect you, you will need to mix it up a bit and think outside the box.
  1. Have a minimum length of 7 characters E.g
  2. Have a mixture of upper and lower case characters E.g. ecA
  3. Have a few numbers in the mix E.g. e9cA1
  4. Have a symbol or two E.g. e9cA&1!
You should also change your password regularly to stop people sneaking a look over your shoulder.
So e9cA&1! is a great password but not very memorable and obviously you don't want to write it down as that defeats the object of creating a secure password in the first place. But you can create a memorable password that is almost as secure by combining the secure methods with something that you will remember.
How about these they are both memorable and secure! 
  1. Tom23Cruise&
  2. AarsenaL1£9
It is important to remember that no password is totally secure If someone has enough time and money they will be able to crack it, what you are trying do is make it so difficult and time consuming to break in they will move onto someone else's.
if you have multiple accounts you should have multiple passwords, you should not use the same password for everything, other wise if someone does crack your password they will have access to everything.
Even if you have a very secure password and you don't write it down and you make sure no one one "shoulder surfing" (looking over your back when you are typing. you should keep an eye out on your accounts for unusual activity, if you sport somethings odd you should change your password at the first opportunity.

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