We are required more and more often to come up with new passwords, most recently with ebay and the Heartbleed bug problems.
Learning a new password can be a real pain. How many passwords do you try until you get the one that works? It has been recommended that we don’t use the same password across our internet accounts, but how on earth are we supposed to remember them all? This blog will show you a secure way to remind yourself of the most complicated passwords.
What about this for a password RGX369AJKL898RJacobs49parsonage113
Impossible to remember?
Not if you create it from this simple set of questions about your life
Can you remember your first car number plate? e.g. RGX369A
Can you remember any other car number plate? e.g. JKL898R
Who was your second boyfriend or girlfriend, their surname, not their first name? e.g. Jacobs
The second – house? e.g. 49
Who was your first boyfriend or girlfriend, their surname, not their first name? e.g. Parsonage
What was the number of the first house you lived in? e.g. 113
The important part is to now write yourself a reminder for that password. One useful place to have it is in your contacts under the notes section.
The password reminder for the above is C1C2B2h2b1h1. So if this was your Amazon password, create a contact on your phone/ipad etc. To a hacker it’s meaningless, only you know what it all means
You will read it like this ….
C1 Car Number plate one = RGX369A
C2 Car Number plate two = JKL898R
Boyfriend 2 = Jacobs (note that your reminder has a CAPITAL J so the name begins with a Capital letter, if its a small b it begins with a lower case letter)
House Number 2 = 49
boyfriend 1 = parsonage (note that your reminder has a lowercase p so the name begins with a lowercase letter, if its a Capital P it begins with a Capital letter)
House number 1 = 113
Spend some time thinking of 8 to 10 different questions. That you can ask yourself without having to write them down ANYWHERE, so only you know the answers. Use these passwords on any site where you order things or buy things. Don’t have the same password for any site. Mix and combine the above. You don’t need to use them all, the example I have given above is pretty extreme.
Think of other variations that suit the clubs you belonged to etc. the only rule is that the first letter must not be repeated e.g. In my list C is always car number plate. H is always house number, so you cannot have H to designate house number and H to designate Hotel name.
One final tip. Have a junk password for those really irritating websites that insist on you having a password to access their information, but where you really do not care if anybody knows it (these are often the websites that then email you back your ‘actual’ password as a confirmation ….. really secure!) Here you CAN use a pet name etc.
Happy Password Creating !