It wasn’t all that long ago that security companies were telling us that passwords should be 8 characters. Now we are being told we need 14 character passwords. Also, the old advice, take a word and change several characters to numbers and characters, well that advice doesn’t work any more either. We are supposed to use passwords that do not come from a dictionary.
Ok, so what to do?
Think of a song or a phrase you like to use. Then, take the same letter, i.e. either the first letter or the second, or whatever, and use that as your password.
For example, since I was listening to Nina Simone earlier today, I might pick the following lyrics:
Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s’oublier
Qui s’enfuit déja
Next, I will take the second letter from each word, which turns it into eeualauoeouee, which gives me 13 characters. Then I want to add a capital and some characters. So I’ll make the first item an @ the first letter a capital E.While I am add it, I’ll add an ! to the end.
That gives me a 15 character password of @Eeualauoeouee!
And now I have a password that will remind me of a depressing song about a woman begging a man not to leave her. Ah well. There you go. Try to guess that one you darned hackers.
Want the full song?