Here’s a way to make a strong password that’s very hard to crack. Follow these steps:
Step 1: Think of a phrase or sentence with at least eight words.
It should be something easy for you to remember but hard for someone who knows you to guess. It could be a line from a favorite poem, story, movie, song lyric, or quotation you like. Example: “I Want To Put A Dent In The Universe”
Step 2: Letter Removal, Replacement, and Substitution
Remove all but the first letter of each word in your phrase: IWTPADITU
Replace several of the upper-case letters with lowercase ones, at random: iWtpADitU
Now substitute a number for at least one of the letters. (Here, we’ve changed the capital “I” to the numeral 1: iWtpAD1tU
Step 3: Use Special Characters
Finally, use special characters ( $, &, +, !, @) to replace a letter or two – preferably a letter that is repeated in the phrase. You can also add an extra character to the mix. (Here, we’ve replaced the “t” with “+”, and added an exclamation point at the end.) : iW+pAD1tU!
There are a number of online tools you can use to check the strength of your password. While none of them will guarantee an unbreakable password, they are a good double-check. Here is a link to a tool from Dashlane. If your password is not strong enough, add some more characters at the end. The example above scores medium, but if you add some numbers at the end, it goes up to strong:
There are good password manager software products on the market today. Some are free; none are very expensive. Using one of these products, you can create truly random, very long, and unique passwords for each site, and because the software will remember them for you, you never have to worry about what your password is. Your password manager will store and encrypt the passwords for you, and log you in automatically. You will have vastly improved security, with only one master password to remember. Use the above 5 steps to create a very strong master password!
Advertisement