Julian Melo – SEO, Wordpress Consultant & Web Dev.
The best password-remembering tip you’ll ever encounter
I’ll admit it. I’ve used the same password for many of my online accounts, which is terribly dangerous in today’s online-driven society. I changed this unsafe practice by coming up with a very unique system and in this article I’ll show you how to create unique and easy-to-remember passwords for all your online needs.
Imagine for a second having the same password for all your accounts, and somehow (either using social engineering or other tactics, such as a key logger) someone gets a hold of it and has locked you out of everything. Your Gmail, your online banking accounts, your goDaddy account and your domains, etc. Now imagine trying to regain possession of all of these accounts. Surely, a nightmare.
In an ideal world, we would have different convoluted (numbers, lower-uppercase, symbols) passwords for every single one of our accounts. Now, at least for me, it would be impossible to remember all of these given the numerous online accounts I’ve got all over the internet. Sure, you can use a program that automatically stores and fills in unique passwords for you, such as Roboform, but just imagine how horrible it would be if, one; your computer caught on fire or got stolen, all your passwords are all gone! Two: if someone got discovered Roboform’s master password. Either way, you’re screwed.
Now imagine a system where you would have easy to remember AND unique passwords for every single account. I’ve come up with the perfect solution. I’ll give you an example of how to achieve this, but remember, just create your own unique way. Just bear with me.
First of all, think of 2 memorable short words and a number. You can use 2 of your current passwords, just to keep things simple, and a number.
- first word: dog
- second word: red
- a number (someone’s birth year, reversed): 37
We’ve got dogred37. Remember, play with upper-lower case combinations.
Now we’ve got doGreD38.
Lets take this combination and make it the base of our unique passwords, and this is how:
For your Hotmail account. Grab the first letter of hotmail, h and the last letter, l. Now combine it with your master password, reversed, and we get: LdoGred37h
- For Gmail: LdoGred37G
- For eBay: YdoGred37e
- For Amazon: NdoGreD37a
Now there you have it. Unique and easy to remember passwords. You’ll never have to click the “forgot your password” link and wait for an email in return EVER AGAIN! Even worse, you won’t be tempted to write down your password on that sticky note on your monitor.
Create your own system. Be creative, but not too creative, where you won’t remember your own combination. Keep it simple.
Please share (without revealing, obviously) how you create and remember passwords in the comments.
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about 2 years ago
It’s pretty simple really, just use the same passwords for the stuff you don’t really care about (last.fm, forum accounts, facebook (I don’t use it that often, so I don’t care)) and when you have something important, like paypal, ebay or gmail, just use a different password. I have different passwords for each of these, but I remember them because I use them daily.
about 2 years ago
Nice Idea! I am good with numbers. So I take the first letter of an online service, link it to a person i know whos first name begins with the same letter. then i put that persons telephone number in it. I finish the password with the first letter of the persons last name. Sometimes the first letters of the middle and and the last name. Sometimes i put the middle name between the area code and the number ….
about 2 years ago
I just use a few simple passwords for stuff that doesn’t matter (forum logins, etc).
For important stuff (banking for example), I just generate really long crazy passwords and commit them to memory.
In the meantime, you can use KeePass to store them in an encrypted database so you aren’t screwed if you forget them.
about 2 years ago
any good password scheme will have a special character…..
about 2 years ago
nice post, i surprised that my comment is 55th.
about 2 years ago
Remember:
1) Some websites only allow a maximum number of characters (usually
2) Some websites do not allow symbols of any type
about 2 years ago
Another idea is that whatever scheme you come up with, if then offset your fingers on the keyboard.
That is, instead of putting your pointer fingers on F and J, put them on other keys, such as G and K, then type your password by touch.
Even you, perhaps, never need to know what the actual password really is.
about 2 years ago
I have a system that may not sound simple, but it is simple for me and I have actually guessed my own passwords that I previously had forgotten, because they were based on my first impressions of things, with a trick borrowed from the Navajo code-talkers. It goes like this:
I have very basic knowledge of a couple of foreign languages. Basically when I look at the name or the nature of a site which requires a password, I roughly translate that name into a word or 2 words that I know well in another language. If I don’t particularly care if the password is terribly strong, I then listen to the sound of the foreign words and decide what English word or pair of words I can substitute that sounds the most like them, and use that for my password.
If I want a stronger password, I use the words I thought of in the foreign language, plus using a numbering system for the foreign alphabet I come up with a number to append, insert, or interlace into the password, depending upon how strong I feel it should be. Sometimes I use the “sounds-like” strategem together with numbers, or combine foreign-language syllables with English sound-alikes. If I do this, I’ll mentally tie the method I use to a particular unique and salient feature of the site in my memory, so that when I return, I will see it and remember. For example, for Ebay, using this method, I would zero in on a feature that stands out for me–the bidding/watching page. Then I would think, “bidding *sounds like* something, combined with watching a *foreign* film”. Repeat this verbally in my mind or aloud a few times, imagining a picture of those activities around the words “bidding/watching”, and then I won’t forget even if I come back months later that “oh, bidding/watching, I did the “sounds-like combined with foreign” method for the password.
As for the password, supposing that Spanish were the foreign language, I would think Bay=Bahia. Since that might be too obvious, I think of the next word *I* think of after Bahia that no one else would think of–in this case, the most common word in the *other* of the 2 catchiest tunes in the movie that “Bahia” makes me think of, and that word is “Yaya”. The closest English sound-alike thing I could think of to “Bahia” would be someone saying “buy here” in an extraordinarily thick New Jersey accent, so the password could be YayaNJbuyhere or better yet YayaNJbaheah (since “buy here” coincidentally has a little obviously too much to with the site in question). I could then use a *number* based on Bahia, the word *not* in the password, to insert in there–2+1+5+9+1=18– and make it Y2a1y5a9N1J1b8aheah, if I really felt I wanted some extreme security here.
So should I come back to the site months and months later, I just look at it, let those first-impression words pop up in my mind, remember how protective I feel toward that password, and manipulate the words accordingly.
The key of course is knowing yourself well enough to choose what will most reliably pop up in your head, internally, especially stuff you normally wouldn’t say or discuss but stays prominent in your mind. That way all those impressions and connections too banal and/or silly to be uttered that often swirl around in our heads could be actually put to good use to really make those passwords ones that you will not forget (or that you could reconstruct even if you did forget) and no one else would guess or tease out with algorithms.
about 2 years ago
Nice idea. I’ve always used 3 passwords:
- A secure password (hard to guess) for all online banking/ebay/paypal/etc.
- A less secure password for my ISP/email accounts/hosting/etc
- A password for everything else
I tend to to just use a word thats quick to type, with a number or 2 embedded and added to the word. eg: 1d0ggy77 (1 doggy 77).
Its not as secure as your method, but it works well given that I often need to share passwords with my wife (so I need to minimise any chance of confusion)
about 1 year ago
Nice ideea … helping hackers and crackers to find more easy our password
about 1 year ago
this is a great way for me to remember my password i love the idea that u have created this is very neat…….
about 1 year ago
If you want a secure password try using this: http://www.flippinSticky.com
about 2 months ago
I think the best password tip I’ve ever come up with was songs.
Take the first line of your favorite (or memorable) song and then take the first letter of each word and turn what you can into special characters.
This will accomplish the main rules of good password making
- Having a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters
- include no common dictionary words
For example:
(first song I could think of was star spangled banner)
Take the first line
oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
Take the first Letter of each word of that line
Oh, Say Can You See By The Dawn’s Early Light
Which is:
oscysbtdel
oscusbtdel (turning you into a U instead of a y is often easier to remember)
oscucbtdel (turning see into a C instead of an S is handy too)
This can be turned into various passwords of different security levels
Here’s a nifty one
O5cucbtde!
tips for turning letters into numbers and special characters
a=@
l = 1 or 7 or !
h=4
s=$ or 5
d or b =6
g or q or p=9
e=3
b (B)=8
and more…
Tips for turning whole words into other letters (can be taken further to turn into a character
and = &
You=u
OH=o=0 (zero)
and more
you=u
of course number words = a number
THREE=3
different account can be as easy as adding a number to the end
Hotmail: O5cucbtde!1
Windows: O5cucbtde!2
work: O5cucbtde!3
and etc
The trick to remembering the password is as simple as ‘singing’ the first line and typing as you ‘sing’… that’s why it makes a good password.
Two tips (don’t sing outloud, pick a song you don’t mind reciting the first line all the time)
If that’s too hard just take your favorite long work and put them together and turn whatever characters you can into special characters
5upercA11fragi11st1c