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How to create a password that’s easy to remember but hard to guess
Breaches, scams, fraud, identity theft. These words are all over the news and, sadly, have affected millions of people. Unfortunately, these crimes will not be going away anytime soon. Therefore, this week’s blog will focus on another way you can protect yourself.
John Eggleston, IT director at West Bend, shares some tips on how you can create passwords that can help keep you and your family safe. John has almost 30 years of IT experience.
Do you ever think about how secure your passwords are? You should. Passwords are vital in protecting your home computers, as well as your bank accounts and credit cards. Because of that, passwords can cause a fair amount of consternation if you have to remember so many of them.
One way to solve this dilemma is to develop a method/scheme to create passwords that are easy to remember, but hard for others to guess. Here are just a few suggestions for devising a password.
The table below better illustrates how these methods can strengthen your password. It lists various passwords and the time it takes a hacker to crack them.
PasswordTime to CrackMethod to Strengthen
Password< 1 secondNo method
P@55w0rd3 daysReplacing letters with symbols and numbers
wbmidog017 hoursCompany representation, a word, and a number
Wbmidog0139 daysSame as above, but added an uppercase letter
1Xa5jK@9#275 daysRandom 9 character password
Du4*fB9$0t58 yearsRandom 10 character password
T4@nk$J04n@bil2 billion yearsUsing mixed case and replacing letters with numbers and special characters. (Says Thanks John a Billion)
K1e2n3n4e5d6y798 billion yearsIntermixed letters and numbers
As you can see, there are ways to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard for others to guess. If you do this, you won’t have to write them down on a piece of paper and stick it to your keyboard. What can you come up with?
Do you have any tips you would like to share? If so, I’d love to hear them. Please share them in the box below.
Topics: Family Safety, Identity Theft
How to create a password that’s easy to remember but hard to guess
Breaches, scams, fraud, identity theft. These words are all over the news and, sadly, have affected millions of people. Unfortunately, these crimes will not be going away anytime soon. Therefore, this week’s blog will focus on another way you can protect yourself.
John Eggleston, IT director at West Bend, shares some tips on how you can create passwords that can help keep you and your family safe. John has almost 30 years of IT experience.
Do you ever think about how secure your passwords are? You should. Passwords are vital in protecting your home computers, as well as your bank accounts and credit cards. Because of that, passwords can cause a fair amount of consternation if you have to remember so many of them.
One way to solve this dilemma is to develop a method/scheme to create passwords that are easy to remember, but hard for others to guess. Here are just a few suggestions for devising a password.
- Use a password scheme that contains characters that are the same across all of your passwords with other characters that are unique to the site you’re logging onto. For example, if you’re a dog lover and you use the stock symbol (or some other way to represent the company), you might come up with a password for Yahoo that’s "yhoodog2015."
- Use a passphrase and turn it into a password. "A Coke and a smile" could be "aCokeAndaSmile."
- Create a compound word using a couple of small words. "My dog Odie" might become "MyDogOdie."
- Take a word or phrase and remove the vowels from it. "Fly like an eagle" becomes "flylkngl."
- Pick a memorable word or name, as well as a number that’s the same length as the word and intermix them. "Kennedy" plus "1234567" is now "K1e2n3n4e5d6y7."
The table below better illustrates how these methods can strengthen your password. It lists various passwords and the time it takes a hacker to crack them.
PasswordTime to CrackMethod to Strengthen
Password< 1 secondNo method
P@55w0rd3 daysReplacing letters with symbols and numbers
wbmidog017 hoursCompany representation, a word, and a number
Wbmidog0139 daysSame as above, but added an uppercase letter
1Xa5jK@9#275 daysRandom 9 character password
Du4*fB9$0t58 yearsRandom 10 character password
T4@nk$J04n@bil2 billion yearsUsing mixed case and replacing letters with numbers and special characters. (Says Thanks John a Billion)
K1e2n3n4e5d6y798 billion yearsIntermixed letters and numbers
As you can see, there are ways to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard for others to guess. If you do this, you won’t have to write them down on a piece of paper and stick it to your keyboard. What can you come up with?
Do you have any tips you would like to share? If so, I’d love to hear them. Please share them in the box below.
Topics: Family Safety, Identity Theft