How to Create Hack-Proof Passwords

Passwords are your last line of defense against identity fraud and other online scams. While it goes without saying that you should always keep your password safe and never give it out, you should also have a password that is strong and secure. Criminals have sophisticated tools to crack passwords, so you need to fight back! Here are some tips for creating strong passwords:

• Don’t make it personal. Passwords shouldn’t come from obvious personal information associated with yourself, such as spouses’ names, kids’ names, anniversary dates, or birthdays. If a criminal gets a hold of any of your personal information, it can be easy for them to crack your password.

• Don’t recycle passwords. Although it’s convenient to use the same password across sites, this makes your highly vulnerable to a damaging attack. Once a criminal gets a hold of one of your passwords, the rest is history.

• Don’t use dictionary words, proper nouns, or foreign words. Password hacking tools are great at quickly running massive dictionaries in all languages to try to guess your password. Even spelling a word backwards won’t help, they can do that too

• Use longer passwords. The longer the password, the more difficult it is to crack. Generally, you want a password which is between six and nine characters.

• Don’t use just plain old letters. Include numbers, upper and lower case letters, and special characters. This makes it more difficult for a computer to crack your password, as the universe of possible characters goes up significantly.

• Use a mnemonic phrase. One example is to spell a phrase phonetically, such as ‘IluvKarZ!’ (instead of ‘I love cars’) or the first letters of of the words of a phrase that’s easy to remember such as ‘anwyccdfy’ = “ask not what your country can do for you.”

#1 technique for creating bullet-proof passwords

In my opinion, the most effective way to create a password that’s easy to remember yet tough to crack is the following:

1. Think of a phrase that’s personally meaningful to you, for example, "i love baked potatoes with sour cream"
2. Take the first letters of the words in the phrase: ‘ilbpwsc’
3. Convert a few random letters to capitals: ‘iLbPWsc’
4. Convert a few letters to numbers which resemble the letters visually: ‘1LbPW5c’

Voila. You have a password that is extremely difficult to crack or guess, and it’s easy to remember. Plus, it’s even kind of fun to think of these!