Create A Safer Password

Yeah, yeah, I know. You've heard this before: go create a nice, safe, hard-to-crack password - one for each site you occasionally visit. And then you respond with: what the hell? I can't remember all of those! And then you give up the whole thing.
Well, yeah. Obviously, something needs to be done, so I've gone ahead and tried to make you an easy guide for the whole thing.

Note: this entry is just about creating a secure, hard to crack password. That is not the whole deal, folks. You should think about how many different passwords you need to have, switching usernames often, categorizing into important and unimportant websites, etc, etc, etc.

I’m not guaranteeing that the password will be safe. It will be better than angellover27, or whatever it is you have right now.

Okay, so enough of that. Basically, the password will consist of two things: a word and a number/symbol thing.

1)      A messed-with word.

Pick a medium length word (we’re talking between four and eight letters here) like puppy, kitchen, soap, auntie, etc. To make the password easier to remember, you can pick a word you think of when you visit the sight. For example, if it were Google, I might choose ‘search’ or ‘homepage’. Now for the ‘messed-with’ part. Since you will have different passwords for different sites, you should always pick different words, but make some ‘messing’ rules for yourself. Some examples would be:

·         The first (or second or third or whatever) letter is capitalized

·         All o’s are replaced with 0’s

·         Between the second and third (or other) letters you place a symbol of your choice (!,.@#$%^&*) are all good examples

·         Replace the fourth letter with a ‘b’, or a ‘z’, or a ‘eu’, or whatever you like

·         The fifth letter is completely removed

·         …

Choose three or four of these rules (or make up your own) and apply them. Puppy might be turned into Pu@bpy, kitchen could be transformed to kic&HEN!, and so on. Always apply the same rules to each word in each of your passwords. If we were to mangle ‘sophia’ using the same set of rules we did for kitchen, we’d have soh&IA!. If we chose the puppy rules, we’d have So@bia. You get the point.

2)     Some numbers and symbols.

Use the site the password is for to inspire you here. For example, if it’s for Google, I might choose (700(71# because in my mind, (7 looks like a G, O is like an 0, L is nearly identical to a 1 and since nothing resembles an e, I’ve opted for SHIFT+3 (which equals #, as you’ve figured out) because the 3 is above the ‘e’ on my keyboard.

And there you go, friends. so@bia(700(71# is much safer than angellover27, and yes, you will be able to remember it.