How to create a unique yet memorable password for every site.
What was that password again? It’s a common problem we all have.
For an answer to that we covered it in on of our podcasts a while ago and then just the other day it was brought up again on Facebook.
Essentially what we’re going to do is create an algorithm (a set of rules) and apply it to a word to create a unique password for every website. It’ll be easy for you to remember because you’ll know the rules. Oh, and don’t use these rules, make up your own. Ready? Ok!
Step 1: Start with a base ‘word’
Chances are you have a base ‘password’ you use already for just about everything, right? So let’s start with that. For this example I’ll use the dumbest password you could possibly use. It’s the actual word, “PASSWORD” as my base word, ok? Please don’t use this as your password either.
Step 2: Obscure it
Now take that base word and mess with it in a way that you think is clever. That might be replacing some of the letters for numbers or symbols. In my case “PASSWORD” will get changed to “PA$$W0RD” with the letter S being replaced with the dollar sign and the letter O being replaced with the number zero.
This is so basic it doesn’t really count as a rule.
Pretty simple right? We’re not done yet. Try running that through https://howsecureismypassword.net/ and you’ll see it comes back as hackable in just 9 hours. Try yours and see.
Besides, we want a unique password for each website, right? Ok so let’s create our first rule.
Step 3: Apply a unique factor to it
This rule will modify our base word so that we’ll have a unique (different) password for every site.
So let’s take our “PA$$W0RD” and apply a rule like… “Count the letters of the website and put that number after the last letter“. So in our example, for Facebook we’ll add the number 8, for Twitter we’ll add the number 7, and for AreWeConnected we would add 14.
Can you see how this would make your password different for each site?
Remember, this is really just our first “rule” yet adding that number would change the strength for “PA$$W0RD14” drastically!
Step 4: Apply another rule
Are you serious? Yes I am. Are you saying you can’t remember more than one rule?
For this rule I’ll add the first two letters of the website to the front end of our string, capitalizing the first and leaving the second lower case. Facebook’s password would now look like “FbPA$$W0RD8“, Twitter would be”TwPA$$W0RD7” , and AreWeConnected would be”ArPA$$W0RD14“.
How secure would that be you ask?
Not bad right? So that’s just two little rules.
- add the number of letters, and
- add the first two letters
Ok. We’re pretty safe now. We have a unique, yet memorable password for each and every website we use. Feeling safe? I could feel a lot safer with just one more rule.
Step 5: Yet another rule
This is our last one, I promise. Let’s simply add a character to the end. Go ahead and pick any one you like. Going across the top of my keyboard I have ~!@#$%^&*()_+ but you could always go with any of the others, <>?:”{}|,./;'[]\ too. Just pick one. For my AreWeConnected password (“ArPA$$W0RD14“) I’ll use the ever popular ! symbol making it”ArPA$$W0RD14!” and guess what?
So that’s it. Just applying 3 little rules and a hackers computer wouldn’t be able to crack the worst password in the world in 3 million years. Yet I can easily create a new password for every new website that comes up and remember them all – how cool is that?.
So we went from a matter of hours to a few years to a few hundred years to over a million years. Did you happen to notice we went from a red background to orange and finally to green? Go run your favorite passwords through https://howsecureismypassword.net/ and see what color you get.
- Don’t worry. It runs on a secure server too (like this site) so everything you send to it is encrypted.
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and now,a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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