I am going to show you a method that you can adapt to your own style to create strong passwords š
Password managers
As a baseline, the most recommended approach is to use a password manager that generates long, unique passwords for each service. However, this manager will require a password that you must remember, and you should also remember the password to access certain other services.
You should not store in your password manager the password for your primary email, iCloud, or the passwords you use to encrypt your backups because if, for any reason, you lose access to the password manager or it stops working, you will not be able to do anything to recover it.
Keep in mind that you can store your Twitter password in your password manager and, if you lost access to the manager, you could recover your Twitter password via email. Do not let what happened to Scott happen to you.
What a password should be like
The first thing you need to know is what a password should NOT be like:
- It must not be predictable: 123456, qwerty, 123456789, etc. You will see that we already know all those brilliant passwords: github.com/danielmiesslerā¦
- It must not be guessable: If your username is antonio@example.com, do not use antonio1, antonio1@, Antonio123, 4nt0n10- or anything like that.
- It must not contain personal information: Do not use your date of birth.
- It must not contain dictionary words.
- You must not store it just anywhere.
And what a password SHOULD be like:
- It must be long, and the longer the better.
- It must be unique, one for each service.
- It must contain a combination of as wide a variety of characters as possible.
- It must be easy for you to remember (and only for you).
Method for generating unique, long, and memorable passwords.
With the method I want to share, you will simply need to memorize ONE password structure that you can use to generate different passwords with a certain level of complexity.
Step 1
Create a base by joining uncommon words that come to mind; to make it harder, they can even be brand names or local words:
caballoherretemagnumzagal
This gives us a long password, but it is still easy to guess because it is a combination of words that are used. If computers are generating AI images, imagine what they will be able to do with passwordsāso you need to make it harder for them.
Step 2
Letās add some movement. The first thought would be to add capital letters, and it would be very easy to add them like this:
CaballoHerreteMagnumZagal
But this is also very easy for them, so letās add capital letters in unexpected places, for example, make all Bs, Cs, and Es uppercase.
CaBallohErrEtEmagnumzagal
Step 3
More movement: letās add some symbols and numbers. For example, we could replace a with 1 and add a symbol at the end
C1B1llohErrEtEm1gnumz1g1l+
With this, you will have a sufficiently complex password that you can rememberānot because you remember the password itself, but because you remember how you generate it.
But we still have one more step.
Step 4
Unique password. At this point, it would be easy to make it unique by adding the name of the service this password is for at the end, for example:
C1B1llohErrEtEm1gnumz1g1l+twitter
But if the password is stolen, they will be able to easily deduce all the others.
One idea could be to simply add the first and second letter of the service after the first and second word:
C1B1llothErrEtEwm1gnumz1g1l+
This makes it more disguised…
GMail, iCloud, Amazon
C1B1lloghErrEtEmm1gnumz1g1l+
C1B1lloihErrEtEcm1gnumz1g1l+
C1B1lloahErrEtEmm1gnumz1g1l+
With this, we can generate long, complex, unique passwords that are probably not memorable, but are āgeneratableā.
And finally, the point of all this: DO NOT USE THE METHOD IN MY EXAMPLE. Use this as a basis to create your own methodāone you can remember, that you can easily recreate, and that has your own quirks.
Did you like it? š Share your favorite password-generation method below… JUST KIDDINGāPLEASE DO NOT SHARE ANYTHING TODAY! š
