Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 3: The basic rules for choosing a password
• Method 2 of 3: Create a secure password
• Method 3 of 3: Using a password manager
• Tips
• Warnings

You need to come up with a "safe" password for almost every personal account you create. To choose a password that is difficult for others to find out, it is best to create combinations of letters and numbers that are not obvious. Fortunately, it is quite easy to come up with a password that is difficult to crack and easy to remember at the same time.

To step

Method 1 of 3: The basic rules for choosing a password

1. Choose a password that no one will easily guess or hack. Don't use a word or phrase that has a special meaning to you - such as a birthday or the name of a family member. That is exactly the kind of information that someone else can easily find out with a little bit of searching.
2. Do not share your passwords with anyone. If you share your password with others, you are in fact openly inviting them to access your Internet accounts, and that opportunity is often misused to steal your information over the Internet.
3. Always choose a long password. Your password must contain at least eight characters. A longer password is even more secure, but there are websites and applications that impose a maximum length for passwords.
4. Use at least one uppercase letter and one lowercase letter in your password. Do not put the uppercase and lowercase letters close to each other. Mixing uppercase and lowercase letters makes your password more difficult to predict. For example, this trick could yield a password like: "JeCaMiJa_22191612", in the first example, or "HuisAaanLepel # 157" in the second example.
5. Use spaces in your password. Often the system in which you have to create a password does not allow the use of real spaces, but if possible it is smart to include a space in the middle of your password. Alternatively, you can use a hyphen ("_"), or maybe even two, as part of your password for a similar effect.
6. Create passwords for different accounts that are similar but still different. You can use similar basic words to make it easier for you to remember your passwords without breaking them all too easily. For example, you can make "JeCaMiJa_22191612" "mychildrenJeCaMiJa-90807060" and "HuisAanLepel # 157" can become "157 * myfirstHouseAanLepel".
7. Write down your password and keep it in a safe place. Do not keep your password too close to your computer (or from prying eyes), but choose a place that you can easily reach. If you forget your password, you can easily find it again that way.
   • Instead of literally writing your password down, you can write it down in code form using a misleading formula that makes it more difficult for others to decipher your password. For example, you could write ri7% Gi6_ll as 2tk9 & Ik8_nn (where the misleading formula is indicated by the first character, in this case: +2). This formula means that all subsequent encrypted characters are formed by adding two numbers, two letters (of the alphabet) or two characters (on your keyboard) to the actual character used in your password.

Method 2 of 3: Create a secure password

1. Think of a sentence or phrase as the basis for your password. This is a good starting point for creating a complex password that is difficult to guess but at the same time easy for yourself to remember. Also, don't forget that your password should be at least long (at least eight characters) and contain as many different types of characters as possible (uppercase and lowercase letters, spaces or underscores, etc.). Although on the one hand you should not include information in your password that is personally relevant to you and that others could easily find out, on the other hand it is useful to take a password that you can remember without too many problems . Coming up with a statement or phrase that you will easily remember can form a practical basis for a secure password.
   • The so-called Person-Action-Object (PAO) method developed at Carnegie Mellon University of Computer Science is an aid in choosing a sentence. You just choose an image or a photo of someone important to you who does something with or about a thing - and then you make a sentence with it (the crazier or more nonsensical the better). By choosing a number of characters from each phrase (for example, the first three letters of each word) you can create a password that is easy to remember.
2. Use your phrase or statement to create an easy-to-remember password. By taking certain letters of your sentence, you can create a password that is easy to remember (for example, you can take the first two or three letters of each word and then put them in sequence). Don't forget to include both uppercase and lowercase letters in your pronunciation or sentence, but also numbers and special characters.
3. Create a complex series of words and / or letters, but one that you can remember. You can take a phrase or string of letters that may seem random at first glance but are still easy to remember. The easy-to-remember strings of letters can form a "root word" that you then supplement with characters and numbers.
   • For example, if your children are named Jessica, Carla, Michael, and Jasper, your base word could be "jecamija" - a combination of the first two letters of each of the names. If your first house was on Lepelstraat, for example, "house spoon" would be a very nice basic word.
4. Please include at least one letter, one number and one special character in your password. For example, you could add a hyphen (or any other arbitrary punctuation mark) and numbers so that you get "jecamije_22191612". You can also add a character to the word and make it "home spoon # 157".
5. Memorize this secure password. For example, from a sentence like "My mother was born in Oranjestad, Aruba, on January 27," you can create a password like MmigiO, Ao27j. And from a sentence like "The radio program starts at 9:10 am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday" you could make: "Hrpbo10o9" AMom, w & v. "
6. If necessary, use the Charactar Map (also known as the Special Characters utility) on your computer to include special characters in your password (if you wish). In Windows, you can find these options by clicking All Programs in the Start menu, then Accessories, then Administrative Tools, and finally selecting the Character Map. On a Mac, simply choose Edit at the top of the browse menu, then select Special Characters at the bottom of the Edit menu. You can then replace some of the letters of your word with special characters to make it harder for others to guess your password.
   • These symbols can replace other more common characters, but it should be noted that some websites' password systems do not accept all available symbols. For example, in the password "Sunshine" you can replace the letters with special characters in the following way: "ЅϋΠЅЂιηξ".
   • Keep in mind that you will have to type this password every time to access a website or app, so keep in mind that it can be difficult to enter those special characters every time you have to type in your passwords. You may well find that too much of a hassle.
7. Do not forget to update your passwords and to make sure you have variety when choosing new passwords. It is not a good idea to use the same password for multiple accounts or websites, nor is it wise to use the same password for more than a few months in a row.

Method 3 of 3: Using a password manager

1. Choose a password manager. A password manager is a software program that allows you to have a wide variety of passwords (for both applications and websites) while only having to enter one master password - reducing the need to organize and remember yourself. Password managers create a variety of different, complex and secure passwords for you for all the different websites and apps that you need to sign up for, and will also remember and monitor them for you, all while remembering that one master password. Some commonly used password management programs include: LastPass, Dashlane, KeePass, 1Password and RoboForm. A large number of articles and websites are available on which these and other programs are evaluated and discussed.
2. Download a password manager and install the program. Which instructions you should follow exactly depends on the program you have chosen; so follow the specific instructions carefully. Typically, you will need to go to the program vendor's website and press the "Download" button and follow the directions that apply to your operating system.
3. Install the password manager. The exact procedure you have to follow for this again depends on the specific program you are using, but the basic idea is that you create a complex master password with which you can then create a lot of different passwords to log in to all the different websites and applications that are available. you're using. Most commonly used programs are fairly user-friendly in terms of their main functions.
4. Adjust your settings. Most good password managers allow you to use your master password either in one place or across many different devices at the same time. Therefore, try to determine in advance what works best for you.You can usually choose whether you want the program to automatically sign you up for certain websites and whether you want it to check your different passwords to ensure that they are sufficiently different from each other and changed regularly.

Tips

• Change your passwords once in a while or as soon as you think your password may not be completely secure and don't use expired passwords. At certain companies, changing passwords regularly is part of the company's house rules or even required by law.
• By using accented letters, you can make your password less easy to find.
• First take a word (for example: "money"), spell it backwards (dleg) and put your date of birth in the middle. So if you were born on February 5, 1974 you would get the following password "d5lfebe19g74". That might be hard to remember, but it's also nearly impossible to crack.
• Get a different, secure password for each of your different accounts. It is best to create different passwords for your internet provider, e-mail client (for example Outlook) and your social media accounts (among others). Do not use the password you use for your e-mail account to log in to your internet provider or to do internet banking.
• To make your password even more secure, you can use nonsense words or phrases. Then combine those words with numbers to get secure passwords that you can remember too, such as "beak beak9468".
• Do not use clear basic words such as a name, date of birth, or date that has important personal meaning to you. Such passwords are much easier to crack than more complicated and impersonal sentences.
• Hackers usually use a tool that uses brute force to try out all possible combinations of letters, numbers and symbols.

The more complex your password, the longer it will take before it can be cracked.

• Never include your name or the username of your account in a password.
• When you write down your passwords, don't forget where you kept them.

Warnings

• Do not share your passwords with anyone. Someone could be listening in, or whoever you've told your password to be, accidentally or on purpose.
• Under no circumstances use the passwords in this article. These passwords have now been published worldwide and are easy to find for everyone.
• When you write down your password, don't keep it where others could easily find or see it.
• Avoid web services that send you your original password by email when you click "forgot password", instead of giving you a temporary password or sending you a link that you need to click to create a new password. This indicates that the web service in question stores passwords using two-way encryption or even plain text; in plain English this means that the system used by the web service to manage passwords is simply not secure.