How to pick a secure password you can actually remember

The latest password breaking scandal claims that Yahoo has lost nearly half a million user’s passwords and email addresses to hacker group D33D. The little-known group claims they stole the passwords using an SQL injection which utilizes rogue commands to extract data from websites. This follows the 6.4 million LinkedIn users whose accounts were hacked last month.

So you know that you have to have to create secure passwords, and that each website you sign up to should have a separate password, but how can you remember them all? Remember the days when you could use your birthday, your dog’s name or your wedding anniversary? Well, thanks to social media, all your personal information can be excavated by the experienced hacker, so we are down to nonsensical letters and numbers. If you’re anything like me, you have a not-so-secret list of all your passwords scribbled in the back of your diary or saved on your smartphone. But this leaves you vulnerable to identity theft should these lists fall into the wrong hands. We are here to help! Now you can devise your own unique passwords that are easy to remember using our word game methodology.

Remember the anniversary date that you couldn’t use any more? If your anniversary is on the 16^th of June, you can change it into a password that you can easily remember without changing the date:

Write the numbers out like this; onesixohsix or spell out some numbers while using digits for the others like this; 1six0six. Want to get particularly fancy? Place periods at unexpected places like this; 1six.0six or throw in some caps for good measure; one6ZerO6. Now we’re getting somewhere!

If you want to use words instead of numbers, use the same tactics. For example, if your dog’s name is Charlie Brown, your password could exclude the vowels to make chrlbrwn. Add some caps to make it more interesting like this; CharlBrwn. Add punctuation and numbers to make it even more secure; Charl.Brwn3. Of course this makes sense to you, but it would be very difficult for aspiring hackers to guess this particular selection of random letters and numbers.

No matter how good your password is poor site security will still put you at risk. Be very careful when passing out your information online.