The Art of Creating Passwords

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I have met many people which have problems to concoct a password. The first few suggestions very often are “mom”, “god”, child’s SSN, pet name, lover name (hope you will not have to share it with your “better half”), etc.

First maybe you have to ask yourself the question,”For what are the passwords for?”. If you do not think your private information is too important, and do not mind if someone know it, then your password is probably just as a matter of form. Here I will say that you will not even become aware when you will have something to keep private, and the old password will stay the same. That is because the password is a habit. Not so differently from the smoking or eating sweet, it could be better habit or bad habit. Here we will talk about good habits:

* Compose your passwords as a mixture of any of the 102 keyboard non-special keys – upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. * Make your passwords long than nine symbols.Why? Because it takes about few minutes with the modern computers to pass all the symbols for three later password, and it takes years if it is more than ten. Do yourself the math. * Do not use names, dictionary words, and popular catch phrases: ‘GoChiefs!’ for pass if you leave in Kansas City – come on. * For Christ’s sake do not ever use “password” you are asked for pass-phrase not to transcribe the word ‘password’.

It is happen very often to forget a newly created password and you have issues with recovering them? That is not an excuse! If you forget your keys frequently inside your locked car, you do not leave it open, do you? So, let’s continue:

* Make your own rules. I will give you an example:

k@th3r1n3

Tough password ha? Maybe you guess it: Katherine. With few changes I made this name a nice password. What will happen if we press ‘Shift’ key while writhing our bird date.

!$ .!@.!(&%

Wow! What is that? Simply – 14.12.1975 Combine both:

J0HN#.&.!(*&

Hmm it sounds easy. Yeah, when you know the logic. But every human has a different logic and with few tricks it can not be beaten. Let us see the above “easy” password.

John3.7.1987

If this ‘John’ is your husband, child, lover, you won’t forget it easily. So, if we change ‘John’ with the old Latin form of the Greek name ‘Ioannes’, also change some of the letters with our logic and add the birthday numbers with ‘Shift’ key, what will happen with ‘Ioannes3.7.1987′:

10@nn3s#.&.!(*&

Ha-ha bad hacker, come on and beat me!

Yes, that is a good password. The only “bad” thing with this password is that probably you will not be able to write it without a keyboard. But why you need it if you do not have a computer in front of you? Some more advices about that matter:

* Someone wants to use your computer: give him a guest account or create a new one, or better – tell him to buy own PC. * Someone wants to use your e-mail for a while and ask you for the password: better show him what you have in your pants!

Make your own logic and stick to it. Create bullet-proof passwords and live safe in the net.

That was it. Hope you enjoyed this article. You can find more interesting articles and tutorials at www.onlinehowto.net

Tony Potter is level 3 engineer in one of the biggest US located hosting companies. On his website http://www.onlinehowto.net he shares more than 7 years of experience collected in about 600 articles and tutorials.

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