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I have helped people with their computer problems for over a decade, and the one thing that I have found that frustrates people and causes more problems than anything else, is not being able to remember their passwords or create new ones.

After reading this post you will no longer have that problem.

The first thing to remember when creating a password is that it must fulfill two basic requirements.

1 - It must be strong enough to prevent anyone from accessing your accounts by merely guessing what your password may be. This means no simple names, dates, places, etc.

2 - You will need to remember this password for a long time, and the one time you need to be able to log on to your account right now will be the time that you cannot remember what it is. Therefore it must be easy to remember.

I know exactly what you’re saying to yourself right now “But Todd, my computer person at work keeps telling me that my password has to have letters, numbers, special characters, 10 characters long, yada yada”. The reason I know this is because I am one of those computer people from 6am to 4pm every day.

Here’s the trick to meeting all the requirements of your computer department, online shopping site, bank, etc. and still keeping your sanity.

First, almost every password will require a combination of letters, numbers and special characters, so don’t fight it. The key is to look at those numbers and special characters as just different looking letters and then come up with a word that is easy to remember and mix in the right amount of each ingredient.

Here’s an example for a password that must contain at least 8 characters, and a combination of letters, numbers and special characters.

First come up with a long enough word. I’ll use my dog’s name ‘Bonnie’ as an example. Yeah, I know, its only six characters long and I need eight. Just bear with me a sec.

First look at what letters I can substitute with numbers. The letter ‘o’ can become a ‘0′ (zero), the letter ‘i’ can become a ‘1′.

Now I have ‘B0nn1e’ - still recognizable and easy to remember. And look at that, it already has a capital letter, two numbers, and three lower case letters, that’s pretty good and no one is likely to randomly guess it.

The only thing to fix now is that it is at least two characters too short.

Now for the piece’de la resistance - I got my dog in 1999. So I’ll just go ahead and put that in the mix as well, but since I don’t want too many repeating characters right next to each other, let’s go ahead and put the ‘19′ at the front, and the ‘99′ at the back and see what happens.

Now I’ve got ‘19B0nn1e99′ as a password, and it’s easy to remember. My dogs name, and the year I got her, and that is just about as strong a keyword as anyone not working for the NSA or the CIA needs to have.

It may take a little getting used to seeing letters as numbers and vice versa, but once you do you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to come up with new passwords and remember them for months at a time.

Here’s a little cheat sheet for converting letters to numbers you can use until you get used to the idea.

Letter = Number/Special Character

a = @

A = 4

B = 8

E = 3

G = 6

H = #

I = 1 or !

O = 0

S = $

Let me know what you think and drop me a line below with any questions, comments or concerns.

Filed under: Internet, Security