Passwords, passwords passwords,...

 Love 'em. Hate 'em

You got some many of them. And you have to change them often. You gotta make them hard, and you gotta remember them. Add that some place won't let you reuse old ones too. Recipe for disaster.

Here's what I tell people to do:  
Make a password strategy. 

I like using variables of relevance, and the calendar is a great place to start it's always changing. We have the year ~ 4 digits, odd / even numbers, could use 2 digits for year, 1 or 2 digits for odd / even, could just spell out odd / even. 

We have the months and seasons ~ 12 months ~4 seasons, odd / even numbers, more options to break this out, every two months counts for 6 values, and we have 4 seasons,

And we have our personal history, using pets, children, so on and so forth.

Swapping out characters for numbers or special characters like all 'i' will be '%' and all 'y' will be # idea.

So you see where I going I hope, but here's an important nugget. we know, we should not use the password at work for your FaceBook account at home, etc., so we now have a forth variable, and that "were" the password is to be used. 

Now I'm not suggesting using the actual site name such as FaceBook, more like service type, work, home, social media home, social media work, personal email, business email. Here again it will be relevant to you.

And last, the order you place these variables and items together.

So here's an example.

Year: odd /even = odd/evn to keep the same number of characters in the password

Month: 2 digit value used backward March = 30

Winny, Sally, Milly, Finny = Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall and all 'i' will be '(' and all 'y' will be ')'

My 5 item service list: 3 characters.

wok =  work

hoe = home

mem = my personal email

wem = work email

msm = my social media

It's Dec, 1st 2011 time to change passwords, and so my password for works email is 1w(nn)wem21 and my personal home computer is,.. twitter, emails,... 

I win a trip to 2 week cruise, I come back, oh darn, what's my password again? Not a problem, because I can rebuild it and come up with the same one, every time. 

How's that for a simple easy way to make a strong password system, only you can generate, yet so easy to remember. Maybe, you only do the year and names, or just the months and seasons, or seasons and service, or even using a total different system.. Either way, when you make relevant you, you can never forget that.

I suggest you take your time, make sure you remember your selection of variables, over time.  Make your system, write it down and hide it. Two weeks later, write it out again and compare copies. Once you have it committed to memory, shred the copies and roll it out slowly.

Lastly, don't use this example, as it's the same 5 service list and 4 season example I've used, time and time again, because I can never forget it!

I hope this help you stay protected and safe.

Bain Finch