Making a Good Password

We are all guilty of using quick and easy passwords.  Every now and then we need to be reminded that this isn’t a good idea if you value your email, privacy, bank account, time, or identity.  The trick is making a good password that you won’t forget again in the next five minutes.

Let’s start with the things not to do.  Don’t use a common single word that can be found in the dictionary.  “Elevator” is not a good password.  Even a combination of a single word followed by a couple of numbers “Elevator24” will be quickly cracked by a bruteforce attack. (A brute–force attack is an attempt to discover a password by systematically trying every possible combination of letters, numbers, and symbols until you discover the one correct combination that works.  When attempted by a fast computer this method can go through millions of guesses in a very short time.)  Many of the algorithms used by hackers now even include common substitutions for letters.  So using a “$” for “S” or a 4 for an “A” isn’t going to fool these guys.

Now for some of the things you should do.  Try to use combinations of capital letters, numbers, and symbols in each password.  Also, everything else equal, the longer the password is, generally the harder it is to crack. So something that looks like this “MbyTg*$hyt^/li3.*9trUPjt” would make a great password.  Unfortunately it’s a random string of characters that will also be difficult for the average person to remember.  To get a similar string of seemingly random characters try to think of a phrase that only means something to you.  For example “I get out of bed everyday at 6am to go for a 4 mile run in New York City!”  You can turn this phrase into a password by using the first letter of every word “Igoobea6amtgfa4mriNYC!”  We have numbers, letters, and characters combined in a pretty much random way unless we know the associated phrase.

Another method would be to use 3 or 4 random unassociated words and string them together such as “MouseChoiceLoanArm”.  The length and random words will make this password difficult to hack but not too difficult to remember.

Curious as to how good your password is?  Try using this site to test it out.  https://howsecureismypassword.net/