How To Making Your Password Unbreakable And Strong

Guest post by Maria Rainier. Eight out of ten people with an online presence use risky passwords according to a survey run by ZoneAlarm (http://blog.zonealarm.com/2011/01/securing-yourself-from-a-world-of-hackers.html). These lead, inevitably, to hacked Facebook pages (“I did not post that!”) and worse, stolen identities.

NASA’s computer geeks warn us that all passwords should be at least 8 characters in length (the average according to ZoneAlarm is 6) and incorporate 4 differing types of characters:

UPPER CASE
lower case
Numb3r2
$pec!al Ch@r^cters

Unfortunately, very few of us actually take NASA for their word. The 20 most popular passwords include the following:

123456
1234567
12345678
123456789
Password
(various, usually female first names, like Nicole)

Come on, guys. We can do better than this. Here’s how.

Don’t go with one word, however unique a word it may be. Even Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a word everyone knows, however long and difficult to spell. Instead, think of a phrase, the first spoken line of your favorite movie, or a line from your favorite poem—anything you’ll remember. For example: Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one “Sordello” (the first two lines of a favorite poem).
Eliminate every letter in every word but the first: hiarbtcbbtos.
Capitalize some letters. hiaRBtcbbtoS.
Substitute some letters with numbers (for example, a 3 for an E, etc.) or simply add numbers. Resist adding your date of birth at the end of the letters. Instead, intermix them: h1aRBtc9bt0S.
Substitute some letters with symbols (for example, an @ for an A, etc.) or add them into the mix: h1@R8tc9bt0$.

At the end of this password generation process, you should have a lengthy, highly complex password.

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she writes about education, online colleges, and the future of online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

What do you think of this post? (Please vote, no registration required)

Interesting (0) Useful (0) Boring (0) A waste of my time (0)