Last week I was reading about a blogger's GoDaddy account got hacked and he was having problems getting the domains back. It made me wonder about what my password was on GoDaddy and since I set it up years ago I was amazed at how simple it was. It seemed that I was too busy to change it and since I have an automated password reminder thing I just never bothered updating the password. While I am referencing the GoDaddy drama this is an all too frequent issue lately
I also have friends and family that think having cat or dog as their password is a good idea so let this be a wake up call. Now I am sure there is better systems and more secure ways of doing passwords this is the way I usually go about it when I am making a password. If you feel like you can improve on this feel free to let me know in the comments.
I usually start with something I like and this is only an example of how I would do it. I don't use this password anywhere. Lets start off with the noun part of my password in this case I want to make it something I remember so I will use my favorite singer Billy Joel. I will use the word Joel but break it up around some numbers. In this case I will use the year he was born. So My starting password would be Jo1949el
Notice the first letter is a capital and it is always like that on the password I use simply to add a capital letter in there with the mix of numbers making it harder. Billy has had 33 top 40 hits. I will use 33 because it saves me time by just hitting the same key twice. My password would be Jo1949el33
Next I add a symbol to the end and this is usually the same key as the double number before it so it would add ## to it making the password 12 characters with a combination of a capital letter a word that is not a common steady word that hackers usually look up first as it is easy and more common and some characters at the end. I use the same symbol combination as the number so it saves me time because I just have to hit the shift key and stay on the same number for 4 strokes and hold the shift key down for the final two strokes. Final password would be Jo1949el33##
This is just a hypothetical password combo system that I use. It is easily adaptable for everyone to use adding their own favorite musician or even a sports team. Do you have something similar that you use.
I have a similar way of doing passwords. I start with a base word that will be the core of every password I generate. It has numbers and letters. For example (not my real password):
M1croS0ft
That might be my core for everything. Then, to customize it on a per-site basis, I’ll add to it. If I’m visiting CNN.com, I will add a C, or if I’m at Facebook, an F:
CM1croS0ft or FM1croS0ft
This allows me to have a nice, complicated password, and the only thing I have to remember is the core (which, trust me, after typing it a bazillion times, remembering the numbers and capitals isn’t a problem). I don’t need to worry about forgetting the whole password, because I can simply look in the URL.
No, it’s not as secure as having a totally unique password for everything you do, but it gets you pretty close – and you can strengthen it by using the first two letters of the url, or the first and last letter of the url, or any manner of add-ons.
What I do most of the time, is take a newspaper or magazine article, and use the first letter of the first word from each of the first 10-12 lines going down the left hand side of the article, then sub a couple of numbers in so it’s alphanumeric. You get a unique password every time, with no personal info lurking.
You do have to make sure you’ve written it down correctly somewhere – you cannot possibly remember them all when you do a lot of them this way.
I like your way but I would only do the first letter of the url, I would get confused any other way.
That sounds complicated to me.
One word… LastPass…
I just use a randomly generated password it creates with 15 characters or more and all the character combination….