Pesky Passwords

Are you having trouble remembering all of your passwords? Here is a quick tip to ensure that your passwords are secure, different for each account you have, and easy to remember!

Things to remember about passwords:

• Many passwords require at least 8 characters. 
• Passwords often require a mix of letters and numbers. Sometimes they allow characters like $%^, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they require them.
• Using the same password for many accounts is easy to remember, but it is not very secure

Try to create passwords that are unique to you and unique to the site you are accessing but that are similar enough so you can remember them.

Here is one idea:
Susan Gordon creates her passwords the same way every time. She uses her initials, the first two letters of the site she is logging into and the year she will graduate. If she needs a special character, she uses the same one every time (!) If she is at a site like Launchpad that requires that you change your password every couple of months, she just changes the special character and uses the same two passwords back and forth.

So for launchpad her passwords look like this:
sgla2014! (and sgla2014@)

For Facebook:
sgfa2014

For GMail:
sggm2014

Susan also uses the same user name every time. She uses sgordon515 as often as possible. (Susan was born on May 15.)

Do you have another idea about how to create passwords that are secure and easy to remember? Go ahead and add your comments to this post :)