How to Create a Secure Password
Security and Fraud June 21st, 2007
Seems like every time I turn around, I have to come up with a new password for something. With using the internet to do online banking, writing blogs, creating accounts for forums and email addresses, and creating web sites, it’s likely that you have to create a number of different passwords and they all have to be something that you can remember without writing down as well as something that people won’t guess. And to add to the difficulty, some accounts require you to change your password every 30 to 60 days!
So I found this post at the Productivity501 Blog, 10 Tips for Creating Secure Passwords to be quite useful. One of my favorite password creation tips was number 6:
6. Ideas for Passwords - Sometimes coming up with a password can be pretty difficult. Keep in mind you need to choose terms that you won’t often talk about. Here are a list of ideas to help come up with words:
- Choose two objects from a picture that you’ll always remember. For example: a drawing at your grand parents house, the illustration from a children’s book, a painting at an art museum, etc.
- Choose two terms from a memorable purchase. For example: bluev6 (first car), thinibm (first computer), gold3crt (engagement ring), 7ftgrand (piano), pinedoor (first house), sunshore (honeymoon destination).
- Look through a catalog and choose terms based on something you see.
- Lookup a random article on Wikipedia and choose a word found or related to a word you find in the article.
Being an artist, this is a very effective tip for me since most artists are visual people. So check out this article here the next time you need to come up with a new password…
…Now if you’ll excuse me, my sixty days are up…gotta go change a password!
Photo of the lock in this post is a cast resin keychain from Harry Allen’s REALITY series
