by Kevin Sanchez

Created on: October 27, 2009

Passwords are very important to stop unwanted people from logging in to whatever accounts you have. Some accounts (such as a Youtube account) aren't that important but imagine someone logging in your Paypal or bank account and stealing all your money?

Now that wouldn't be fun, right? That's exactly the reason why we need passwords. Not just passwords, but strong passwords. Passwords that no-one could ever guess. According to many reports I have been reading, lots of people still use easy-to-guess passwords. People tend to use passwords that have the name of their pet in it, or the name of their spouse. Rest assured that this is an absolute NO-GO!

Passwords should contain random gibberish, but be wary: you still have to be able to remind the password. So how do you create a strong password? Read on to learn more!

What's your favorite phrase?
Think about a phrase that you often use. Let's say your favorite phrase is: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown". Now use the first letter of each word in this phrase in your password. That would be: ULTHTWAC.

No-one will be able to guess that. However, you can enhance the strength of this password by simply adding a number of the year in which you were born every two letters. Let's say you were born in 1965. That would make: "UL1TH9TW6AC5".

That's a pretty strong password we got there. You can still optimize the strength of the password. We have 4 groups of letters now. We can type the first group in uppercase, the second group in lowercase, the third group in uppercase again and the fourth group in lowercase again. That would make: "UL1th9TW6ac5".

Now ask yourself the question: "Who will ever guess this?". You are absolutely right: no-one will.

Do NOT use your password on more than one website
Many people who finally made a strong password do not have the courage to make another strong password, and do you know why? Because they have to remember all of these strong passwords. Therefore, many people tend to use their one strong password on every site they sign up, over and over again.

But imagine the following case. You use the password for an on-line game, but that website just got hacked. The hacker published all credentials of all accounts on a website. Do you already know what I mean, yet? Right, that's what I mean. If a hacker finds your password for one website, he knows the password to all of your accounts everywhere.

I cannot stress this enough: do NOT use your password on more than one website.

But how will I remember all my passwords?
You can use the built-in password manager in your browser. I would recommend using Mozilla Firefox if you plan to do this, since you can use a main password. Firefox will ask you to enter the main password each session in order to enable the password auto-fill feature. If the main password isn't correct, Firefox will not automatically fill in your password, so only you can make use of the auto-fill feature.

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