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Using Pass Phrases to Make Secure Passwords

The best type of password to make is a pass phrase. These are passwords that are basically built off of phrases only you would know. I always make mine 12 to 14 characters long and include several special characters making it even harder to guess.

First think up a phrase (ie a sentance or two) that would be special only to you. Stay away from popular quotes or anything that would be easily guessed. Here is an Example phrase I might use.

I love my kids to death. I always wonder were they’re at!

I will always remember that! Now to start making the password, take the first letter of each word, in order and the puncuation and write them down, like so:

ilmktd.iawwta! (make sure there are no spaces between words or sentances)

That is pretty good. To make it harder though I am going to replace a couple words with letters or numbers that I can easily remember such as “to” with “2″ and “at” with “@” and “i” with “1″

1lmk2d.1awwt@!

Now that is looking even better and more secure. To top it off now I will randomly capitalize a couple words that, to me, have signifigance such as kids, love and wonder.

1LmK2d.1aWwt@!

Now that is a mean looking password! Something I can easily remember and would not be able to be just guessed by some hacker! Some websites may not always allow certain characters like ! or @ but I have noticed less and less as security has became more of a demand on the internet.

If so, making a few variations to the password to not use those characters is not a big deal, just remember and use the same variations whenever you run into a site that restricts ceratin characters and you’ll be less likely to forget how to log in.

Edit: Although these are very secure it is still not a bad idea to change them every six months or so, just in case