Example of a strong password system that appears to be difficult, but is very easy to manage:
- Choose a two word phrase, words that don’t seem to go together, i.e., salt tick
- Link the two words together by using the first two letters of the website you are visiting, i.e., for Amazon use saltAmtick, Chase Bank use saltChtick.
- Throw in a capital letter or two, i.e., SaltAmTick
- Add a number, i.e., Sa1tAmTick
- Add a special character or two, i.e., S@1tAmT!ck or $@1tAmT!ck (`~!@#$%^&-_=+[{]}.)
- If you have to change the password add a number to the end increasing the number each time, i.e., S@1tAmL!ck1
Use this system for all of your sites you only have to change the two middle characters to be able to access any site making passwords easier to remember but hard to crack. If a site doesn’t allow special characters, change the character back to a letter – @ to a and ! to i.
On Password list you only have denote the two-letter code you added to middle and any number to end when changed
- Example: norm + AM, norm+special + AM, norm+special +AM+1
Click on this link to test the strength of your passwords and change your passwords to make them harder to crack. http://random-ize.com/how-long-to-hack-pass/
Do Not Choose…
- Your name in any form — first, middle, last, maiden, spelled backwards, nickname or initials.
- Any ID number or user ID in any form, even spelled backwards.
- Part of your userid or name
- Any common name, e.g., Sue, Joe
- Passwords of fewer than six characters
- The name of a close relative, friend, or pet
- Your phone or office number, address, birthday, or anniversary
- Acronyms, geographical or product names, and technical terms
- Any all-numeral passwords, e.g., your license-plate number, social-security number
- Names from popular culture, e.g., Harry_Potter, Sleepy
- A single word either preceded or followed by a digit, a punctuation mark, up arrow, or space
- Words or phrases with all the vowels or white spaces deleted
- Words or phrases that do not mix upper and lower case, or do not mix letters or numbers, or do not mix letters and punctuation.
WHY!?
If you only use words from a dictionary or a purely numeric password, a hacker only has to try a limited list of possibilities. A hacking program can try the full set in under one minute. If you use the full set of characters and the techniques above, you force a hacker to continue trying every possible combination to find yours.
Do not share your passwords with anyone