![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.telegraph.co.uk\/technology\/files\/2013\/03\/login-username-password-460x268.jpg\")
\nBreaches, scams, fraud, identity theft. These words are all over the news and, sadly, have affected millions of people. Unfortunately, these crimes will not be going away anytime soon.
\nDo you ever think about how secure your passwords are? You should. Passwords are vital in protecting your home computers, as well as your bank accounts and credit cards. Because of that, passwords can cause a fair amount of consternation if you have to remember so many of them.
\nOne way to solve this dilemma is to develop a method\/scheme to create passwords that are easy to remember, but hard for others to guess. Here are just a few suggestions for devising a password.
\n\u2022 Use a password scheme that contains characters that are the same across all of your passwords with other characters that are unique to the site you\u2019re logging onto. For example, if you\u2019re a dog lover and you use the stock symbol (or some other way to represent the company), you might come up with a password for Yahoo that\u2019s “yhoodog2015.”
\n\u2022 Use a passphrase and turn it into a password. “A Coke and a smile” could be “aCokeAndaSmile.”
\n\u2022 Create a compound word using a couple of small words. “My dog Odie” might become “MyDogOdie.”
\n\u2022 Take a word or phrase and remove the vowels from it. “Fly like an eagle” becomes “flylkngl.”
\n\u2022 Pick a memorable word or name, as well as a number that\u2019s the same length as the word and intermix them. “Kennedy” plus “1234567” is now “K1e2n3n4e5d6y7.”
\nIn addition to these suggestions, it\u2019s always a good idea to mix upper and lower case letters in your password and add special characters (i.e., @, $, !, etc.) within the password to make it harder to guess or hack. Just do it in a way that\u2019s easy for you to remember, like replacing each letter S with a $ or a 5. To make your password even stronger, remember that longer is better
\nBelow\u00a0lists various passwords and the time it takes a hacker to crack them.
\nPassword\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 < 1 second No method
\nP@55w0rd\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a03 days Replacing letters with sympbols and numbers
\nwbmidog01\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a07 hours Company representation, a word, and a number
\nWbmidog01\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a039 days Same as above, but added an uppercase letter
\n1Xa5jK@9#\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0275 days Random 9 charcter password
\nDu4*fB9$0t\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a058 years Random 10 charcter password
\nT4@nk$J04n@bil\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02 billion years Using mixed caseand replacing letters with numbers and special charcters. (Says Thanks John a Billion)
\nK1e2n3n4e5d6y7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a098 billion years Intermixed letters and numbers
\nAs you can see, there are ways to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard for others to guess. If you do this, you won\u2019t have to write them down on a piece of paper and stick it to your keyboard. What can you come up with?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"