How to create strong password

I’m not sure about you, but I certainly do not want to type a love story whenever I have to fill up a password field. But I also do not want my password to be so easy that even a pre-school kid can guess what it is.  And, if possible, I don’t want to use the same password on different sites, because if one is compromised, then my entire online identity is exposed.

Here’s a tip I’d like to share with you guys on how to create super strong passwords for different websites and yet you only have to remember 4 characters!

1. Decide from the onset:
   • How many characters you want to use for your passwords. Personally, I feel between 8 and 9 will suffice.
   • 4 common characters – preferably symbols – you want to use across all the websites which you have to key in password. Symbols are those characters you see that are above the numbers on your keyboard and also to the left of the ‘Enter’, ‘1′ and right ‘Shift’ keys. Eg: ~!@#$%^&*()_+”:;’
   • Where you want these 4 common characters to be: All at the beginning? All at the end? Or two in front and two behind? It’s up to you. But it must be consistent across all the websites.
2. Here comes the easy part! Construct the rest of the characters using the website name (URL).
   • Take the first *5 characters of the URL where you want to use the password. *This number is dependent on how many characters you have decided to use for your password.
   • If the URL has less than 5 characters, then use the whole URL – including the .com, .net. .org., etc.

Here are some examples:

Example No. 1 – My blog: www.melvinneo.com

1. I’ve decided to use 9 characters.
2. The 4 symbols are: !@)( and I’ve decided to put in at the beginning.
3. The first 5 characters of my URL is melvi (Ideally, you should also replace e with 3, i with 1, a with @, s with 5, and o with 0). I’ve also decided to capitalize my first character, M. Therefore it will be M3lv1
4. And now my password becomes: !@)(M3lv1

Example No. 2 – www.me.com

1. I’ve decided to use 9 characters for all websites.
2. The first 4 symbols and placement are the same for all websites. Therefore, it’s: !@)(
3. The first 5 characters of the above URL is: M3c0m
4. And now my password becomes: !@)(M3c0m

Example No. 3 – www.hotmail.com

1. I’ve decided to use 9 characters for all websites.
2. The first 4 symbols and placement are the same for all websites. Therefore, it’s: !@)(
3. The first 5 characters of the above URL is: H0tm@
4. And now my password becomes: !@)(H0tm@

See? The first 4 characters are essentially the same. And the last 5 represent the URL. Now you can have different passwords for different websites and still can remember all of them! It can be easy to create and remember strong passwords if you just get a little creative.

Try it for yourself and test it using the password meter here.

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Tagged as: Internet, Social Media