Easy Password Tips… Because Passwords Are Important!
Don’t Skedaddle Away!
Many of you are going to see the word password in the title and skedaddle away looking for a tip you can sink your teeth into. However, if you ever have your simple, easy-to-guess password stolen – you know the password you use for every site – you’re going to wish you had skedaddled back here and read this tip.
We preach this a lot because it’s so important!
We preached and preached about using a good password manager like LastPass, Bitwarden, Roboform, or some other good password manager to create and manage passwords. But alas, we realize that many of you are still not using a password manager… and some of you never well.
Strong passwords are very important and it’s almost as important that you never use the same passwords on sites that deal with money or sensitive information (Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, home addresses, cell phone numbers, or anything other than a first name and an email address. *You can always use a throwaway email address too* ).
We have been around the computer world for a long time, so we know exactly why so many of you use simple passwords like ellen123 or bernie1950. And we know why you use the same passwords over and over. Why? Because it’s difficult to remember strong complex passwords and it’s very frustrating when your log-ins fail because you can’t remember your password(s). BUT AGAIN… you should never use the same password more than once on sites where your personal information is stored or sites that deal in money.
[These are all good reasons you should use a good password manager like LastPass, Bitwarden, or RoboForm.]
Finally! The easy password tips…
So, for those of you who continue to resist password managers, here are some tips on creating easy-to-remember, but strong and complex passwords from your old Uncle TC and Auntie EB.
Let’s say your favorite movie is “Groundhog Day”. You can make a strong password from that, you know?
Gr0undh0g_D@y
That’s simple, but all the letter o’s are zeros, and there are two capital letters and an @ for the letter a. And the asterisk at the end adds a symbol to create a very secure password. According to www.howsecureismypassword.net, it would take three million years for a hacker to crack that simple-looking password. And if the site requires a number, just change it to:
Gr0undh0g_D@y_F3b2
That one is good for 7 quadrillion years… and my friends that’s longer than even EB is going to be around.
What if your wife has nice eyes? And her name is Eileen?
iLuvuri’sEil33n
And, husband of Eileen… you’re in luck. Even though that password is fairly short, it would take 34,000,000,000 years to crack that password.
Or what about your license plate, zip code, last 4 digits of your cell number, and your first name? You can remember those things, right?
ZL4639*43413*4519*D@vid
His Ohio license plate is ZL4639, his zip code is 43413, the last 4 digits of his phone number are 4519 and his name is David. As you can see we used asterisks to separate them and the @ sign for the “a” in David. Oh so clever! And, you’re pretty safe… according to www.howsecureismypassword.net, it would take a computer 297 octillion years to crack it. (It would take me a long time to type out 297 octillion years. In fact, it’s a quadrillion quintillion: 1 followed by 48 zeros.
OK… now we’ve given you some ideas on how to create some pretty strong passwords that are easy to remember and almost impossible to hack. If you don’t want to use a password manager like LastPass, BitWarden, or RoboForm, at least put our easy-to-use password tips to use!
Let’s see what I can do with Darcy’s name…
D@rcy*It’s*Tim3*2*P@y*M3
It would take octillions of years to crack that one. But I’m sure by then she would have paid me at least once.
Please pay the man EB…he works his fingers to the bone (or so he says). LOL
Th@nk*y*u4th@Tip*s = Thanks for the Tips
Good instructions. I am one of your stuburn old ladies that hate hard passwords. I will do your instructions. Thank you.
Y0U’RE*W3LC0M3*$andy
You can use the periodic table. Thundercloud begins with T, the 20th letter of the alphabet. Hence 20calciumCa+2 is a possibility (atomic number 20, name, symbol, principal valence: numerals, upper and lower case, special symbol))
Oh Albert, did you mistype your last name? Shouldn’t it be Einstein? My brain hurts now! The only Valance I know about is Liberty Valance 🙂 and I know the man who shot Liberty Valance too – it was James Stewart.
Seriously, thanks for the tip.
Luv*s3n$/0f**HU-mer h3r3! TY!
I believe using a £ sign or similar lesser used currency symbol is also useful but guess $ not a good idea!
You lost me 🙂
Your proposal for creating a secure password is good. Problem is that it does not scale. I have about 100 secure accounts I need to access and if I were to use the same password on each account the consequences of 1 of those sites being hacked and my password disclosed could be significant. While the following doe not work 100 of the time (typically on sites that constrain the use of special characters) The following is how I have created a secure password that is unique to every site.
1. Chose a number between 100 and 999
2.Pick a word that you will remember (optionally, then modify that word as proposed in the original post i.e. odd capitalization, substitute number for letters)
3. chose a minimum of 1 special character (I have found that + and a couple of others don’t always work)
These are your basic building blocks and will be standard in all password
Put the above in any order, while adding the first one or two characters of the company name (or website) and as a seperate building block, the last one or two chararters of the company name or wbsite (you can do odd capaitialization on these, but it is important to be standard)
you now end up with a password that for this website could be
!!616tpassw0rdUd
where !! are your special characters
616 is your number
t (for “thoundercloud”) is the first letter of the based url
passw0rd is the memorable word with the o repalced by a 0
Ud (for “thoundercloud”) is the last 2 letters of the based url
Again chose your own order
This looks complicated, but it took me about a day to embed my personal pattern in my brain and be able to create and use it with confidence. Now I can go to a site I have not visited in a year and log on no problem and every password is unique
A second caveat. Watch that you keep the total size down a big number and a big memorial word can make the password too long for some sites
Wow you could have saved yourself a lot of writing! We warn people twice in the article never to use the same password twice. Your post will absolutely turn people off of using secure passwords. Heck, they’d have to follow a manual just to create a password. I have over 100 accounts, but only about 20 of them are critical. I don’t consider Aunt Betty’s Home Cooking site to be critical. I can use a throwaway email address and call myself Sam Elliot if I want… Betty won’t care and either will I. I can use a password like H0N3$T Ab3 or even 0ne-TW0-Thr33-4 or even SamElliot#9 – If old Betty gets hacked, people will get a fake name and a throwaway email address – so what?
Being Geeky or trying to prove how much you know, isn’t a good way to get people to use strong passwords on sites that really matter. And I’m 99.9% sure you don’t have 100 sites that all have personal information about you like credit card numbers, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, drivers’ license number, home address, etc. If have that many critical log ins, heaven help you.
I’m sorry but I had to rebut your long geeky screed lest people miss the point of the article you apparently didn’t read.