How to Generate a Strong Password which is Easy to Remember

Keeping a strong password for your online accounts ensures that your online identity is safe and secure. If you are not maintaining a strong password for your online/offline accounts you are asking for trouble. Who knows someone is trying to hack your online account for some bad intentions.

In Twitter itself we have seen many celebrity profiles getting compromised. In the following post I will share a few tips on how to generate and maintain strong and secure passwords. Feel free to effectively use these tips to generate a strong password for any sites including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Ebay.

Best Practices to Generate Strong Passwords

1. Do not use a password string that someone else might know/guess (like your name, date of birth, telephone number, etc.).
2. It should be AT LEAST 6 characters long, 8 characters for Windows NT.
3. Do not use a string that is sequential in nature and easily guessable (like password, asdfg, your name, 123, etc.) Try to randomize the string.
4. It must be alpha-numeric in nature (i.e. it must be a combination of alphabets and numbers).
5. It should contain both UPPER and lower case characters.
6. It must contain some special characters, punctuation marks (like @, $, ^, !, ?).

Step by step Guide to Generate a Sample Strong Password that You can Easily Remember and Use at Multiple Places

Lets take a test case. Lets try to generate a password for a Twitter account. For every step we are about to follow we will generate a ’string’.

1. String 1: Think of a string that you may associate with the term Twitter.

   Lets assume it to be ‘tweet’. For Google account you may use ‘goog’, for Facebook use ‘fb’.

2. String 2: Think of a 3 digit character string that will be common to all your online accounts (Twitter, Google, Yahoo, etc.).

   In this case lets assume it to be ‘pass’ (the first 3 characters of the word ‘password’).

3. String 3: Think of a 3 digit number that will be common to all your passwords (Twitter, Google, Yahoo, etc.).

   In this case lets assume it to be ‘246′ (instead of 123 which is sequential I multiplied it with 2).

4. String 4: Separate the string 2 and 3 with a DOT or SPACE or UNDERSCORE or HYPHEN and add them.

   In our test case lets use a DOT. Adding string 2 and string 3 we get: pass.246

5. String 5: Capitalize all the alphabets of string 4.

   So ‘pass.246′ becomes ‘PASS.246′

6. String 6: Add string 1 and string 4.

   So we get: tweet + PASS.246 = tweetPASS.246

7. String 7: Now follow this rule set (or create your own) to replace all the alphabets with special characters:
   • Replace ‘a’ or ‘A’ with ‘@’
   • Replace ’s’ or ‘S’ with ‘$’
   • Replace ‘i’ or ‘I’ with ‘!’
   • Replace ‘o’ or ‘O’ with ‘0′ (zero)
   • Replace ‘e’ or ‘E’ with ‘3′
   • Since many sites do not allow SPACES, replace ’space’ with ^

So following the above rule set the final password becomes tw33tP@$$.246 which is not only strong but easy to remember as well. For Google account the password can be g00gP@$$.246 , for Facebook fbP@$$.246

Now use the steps above to generate your own password.

How to check the strength of a password and store it online securely?

Passpack is an online and offline password generator, password strength checker and manager that will do the job for you. For a detailed review please check Passpack Review: An Online Password Management Tool that works Offline too

[Image By BrittneyBush]