By now you’re probably aware of the dangers of hacking and identity theft, and you know that strong passwords are important. But you still end up using easy to remember passwords. Maybe you think, “Hey–nobody’s going to guess my cat’s name and my birthday.” Well, you’re probably right—nobody will. But the automated scripts that knock on the door of every website and generate hundreds of thousands of passwords a minute just might.
If you want to avoid trouble here are a few suggestions along with three easy ways to create and remember strong passwords.
- Use at least twelve characters with letters, numbers, and symbols
- Don’t use words that you would find in a dictionary
- Don’t use obvious substitutions (“zero” for “o”: f0rever)
- Don’t use obvious combinations (names, birthdays, consecutive numbers)
- Don’t use personal information (your SS number)
- Don’t use the same login credentials on multiple accounts
3 Ways to Create and Remember a Strong Password
1. First Letter Method
Choose the first letter of each word in a sentence, lyric, book title, or other memorable item combined with symbols and numbers:
“The name of my first dog was Max! We lived at 115 Main Street.” becomes: “TnomfdwM!Wla115MS.”
2. Random Word Method
Instead of remembering a long string of letters and numbers you could memorize four random words and toss in an ice cream cone emoticon for fun:
“IceCreamLawnmowerMan~oO>”
Just imagine the Good Humor man mowing the lawn. A mnemonic device like this will ensure that it’s stuck in your head forever!
3. Set It and Forget It Method
Many sites today, including those on the WordPress platform, allow users to automatically generate a strong password. While these may be difficult (or impossible) to remember, tools like Google Password Manager will securely store all of your logins. There are a number of other online password managers that can also help. Password managers generate strong login credentials for your websites and services and store them, encrypted, at the device level. In other words, you can’t log in from a computer or phone other than your own. Here are The Best Free Password Managers of 2017 from PC Magazine.
Are You a DatAchieve Client?
In order to maintain the security of your website, we will soon be asking you to set a new password. When you log into your site you will be prompted to enter a new, strong password. We hope that the ideas we’ve shared in this post will be helpful.