How To Pick A Strong Password

Choose a password which is hard-to-guess and don’t contain dictionary words, and that don’t contain information about the user (such as the user ID, names of family members, date of birth, etc.).  

The best method for choosing passwords

The single best method for generating passwords is to do the following:

Make up a sentence you can easily remember.

Some examples:

I have two kids: Jack and Jill.
I like to eat Dave & Andy's ice cream.
No, the capital of Wisconsin isn't Cheeseopolis!

Now take the first letter of every word in the sentence, and include the punctuation. You can throw in extra punctuation, or turn numbers into digits for variety.

The above sentences would become:

Ih2k:JaJ.
IlteD&A'ic.
N,tcoWi'C!

As you can see, the passwords generated by this method can be fairly secure, but are easy to remember if the sentence you pick is one that is easy for you to remember. In cases where an application allows long passwords, you could possibly use the entire phrase as your "password". 

Please don't use one of the sentences above to generate your password.

Another password selection method

If you don't wish to use the above method, the following method also generates "reasonably secure" passwords (though not quite as good as the method above) that may be easier to remember:

1. Choose two or more unrelated words such as:

unix & fun
book & goat
august & brick

2. Add a number to the end
3. Join the words with a non-alphabetic character or two.
4. Make at least one change (for example, uppercase a letter or add another character) to one or more of the words (preferably not just at the very beginning or end of the password).

e.g. UniX$fun#1500 or august,=bRICK$1

Please don't use one of the examples above to generate your password.

 

Tips

• Don't use obvious base-words like a name, birthday or date, these are easier to crack than whole phrases.
• Change your passwords periodically or whenever it may have become compromised.
• Don't re-use an expired password.
• Mixing in numbers and letters (e.g.: j78hu5948h0gy67g)
• Use at least 10 characters in your password or passphrase

 

Warnings

• Do not tell anybody your password.
• Do not use any passwords you just saw on this page; they are now openly known and easy to find.
• Do not write your password anywhere where it might be seen or found.