Picking the right password: iinet Blog
Posted on: December 4, 2010
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Gmail Password Strength Meter (Image via Wikipedia)
Sandra Lim over on the iiNet blog discusses how to pick the right password. Security is ultra important these days, so having a strong password is vital. Sandra has some good tips here, but it’s more guidelines and no practical solution. Here’s my thoughts.
Having a strong password often means it’s difficult to remember. However, you can easily create a password that is both strong and easy to remember. The key is having an easily memorised key word. Let’s pick potato. Now, shift everything up one row on your keyboard so that it’s now 095q59. Not a dictionary word. “Random” collection of numbers and letters. Now let’s capitalise the first letter to get )95q50 and you now have a symbol in there as well (but you won’t necessarily get a symbol for every word).
Now it’s still short, so what we want to do is to add a description of the website that the password is for. For example, for Facebook, you might think it’s a time-waster. So you might have a password such as )95q504W@$t3. See what I did there? I added the number 4, and then the word “waste” in l33t speak, where you replace letters for symbols and numbers. The password reads in your mind “Potato for waste” but is a very secure password that is difficult to crack. By doing this, you can have a strong password for every site you need a password.
A word of warning though: you are essentially using a system. So if someone works out the system that you use, and works out what your key word is, they can have access to almost everything. So keep essential data – such as online banking – with a different password.
Your password is the key to your life online – your virtual identity, lifestyle and finances. Just as a house or car key should be difficult to copy, it’s important to pick a password that’s difficult to guess.
via iiNet Blog
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