Advice for Creating Strong Passwords
We live in a world where posting personal details across social media and online accounts is a necessity. Because identity theft is an increasingly common crime, strong and unique passwords are more important than ever. However, many of us struggle with creating and remembering secure passwords.
Here’s a hint: if your password is dentist123 – this advice is for you!
Tips on Creating & Managing Strong Passwords
One option is to use an app that generates random passwords and stores and deploys them. Dentist Identity uses LastPass (although this is not an endorsement of that program over others).
A more personal option is to create a formula that you can use across sites. Your formula may include a specific combination of characters, numbers, and letters. Be aware that this formula should be complicated and hard to guess. For example, a capital letter followed by lowercase letters, followed by numbers (like Dentist123) is far too common and easily accessed. In fact, some studies have found that half of all passwords follow this pattern.
Likewise, stay away from using any combination of the following information for your passwords:
- your name
- your family or pets
- birth or anniversary dates
- the full name of website you’re visiting
This information is easily accessible from public databases. And consider that you may be giving away other personal information (such as your birthday) that can be used by hackers.
A Quick Trick for Creating a Secure Password
The best and most secure passwords are at least 8 characters and are composed of a random collection of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. But how do you create and remember such passwords?
A good idea is to use the letters of a favorite song or phrase. For example, my mother used to sing to me “You Are My Sunshine.” Substituting common shortcuts U for You and R for Are, zero for 0, and dollar signs for Ss gives me the following core password:URm$s,M0$s
Then to tweak it for each individual site, I use an element of that site’s name (but remember, not the full name). To make it harder to guess, instead of using the first letter of the name, I’d use the third letter (or whichever one you’ll always choose) and insert it in the same place. So for Facebook, my password would be:
URcm$s,M0$s
For LinkedIn it would be:
URnm$s,M0$s
A last consideration for an extra step of security is to change your passwords often, especially to your most sensitive accounts. I might insert the number of the month in a particular location, such as the fourth character. So in January my Facebook password would be:
URc1m$s,M0$s
And in April it would be:
URc4m$s,M0$s
These looks like random, complicated passwords, but are actually quite simple to remember.
Using consistent substitutions such as $ for S or 0 for O, uu for W, etc. can help you, as can setting up a regular pattern of capitals and lowercase letters (for example: one lower case, 2 capitals, symbol, repeat in reverse).
Become familiar with how to change your passwords and if you do need to give anyone access to your account, create a different password and change it rather than letting someone see your real formula. Yes, this all takes a bit of time, but it beats dealing with the alternative - identity theft!