Passwords are important – they are all that stand between someone finding out your personal information and creating major problems for you.  You need a great password, not just a good one.  It’s got to be tough to crack but easy for you to remember.  Check out this password:
Dbc.2ahtt
It might look like a random collection of characters, but it’s not.  There’s a method behind the madness, and it isn’t that hard once you know how. Here’s how to make it, in a simple 4-step process:

1. Start off with a line from a song
2. Take the first letters of every word in the line
3. Substitute 1 capital letter & 1 number
4. Add punctuation (also called non-alpha numeric characters)

Let’s go over that in detail, with an example on how to make a minimum 8 character password that requires a capital letter, a number and punctuation.

1. Start off with a line from a song
This  what helps make it easy to remember.  Have you ever blanked when thinking of a password? I have, and instead of racking my brain trying to remember, I just start singing the song in my head.  I remember in seconds. For our example, let’s go with Elvis Presley and his classic song Don’t Be Cruel.  We’ll use this line from the song: Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true

2. Take the first letters of every word in the line
Our line Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true becomes dbctahtt The first letters combined make for a decent 8 letter password.  The next step will make the password much tougher to figure out.

3. Substitute 1 capital letter & 1 number
Let’s make 1 of the letters a capital – the first letter is usually easiest to remember, but any letter will work.  Our password now looks like this: Dbctahtt Now we need to substitute a number for one of the letters.  Here are some ideas for substituting words or letters for numbers:

• Change a word that sounds like a number
  • One or Won becomes 1.
  • To, Too or Two becomes 2.
  • For or Four becomes 4.
  • Ate or Eight becomes 8.
• Change a letter that looks like a number
  • A lower case L – like l – becomes 1.
  • E turned backwards looks like 3.
  • B becomes 8.
  • S becomes 5.

We’ve got an easy one in our original example Don’t be cruel <<to>> a heart that’s true. That’s the 4th word in the line, so we’ll change the 4th letter in the password to 2: Dbc2ahtt Not bad - it’s already much harder to figure out than using the name of a pet or sports team.  (I know someone who was a Yankees fan who had his whole Yahoo account hacked because his password was … Yankees.) The next step – adding punctuation – will make this a really tough password for someone to figure out.

4. Add punctuation
The easiest places to add punctuation are

• The beginning
• The end
• A pause/change in the line

I like the last one best as the password then takes on the flow of the song, making it easier to remember. When you sing our line from Don’t Be Cruel, there’s a pause in it like this: Don’t be cruel … to a heart that’s true That pause is where I’d put some punctuation.  The easiest to remember is a period, but other possibilities are commas and exclamation points.  Using a period, our password becomes Dbc.2ahtt Now we have a password with lowercase letters, a capital letter, a number and some punctuation.  Making an effort to remember the password in the days after making it will help commit it to memory – especially if you sing the song in your head at the same time! Now it may seem easy to figure out, but it won’t be for someone who’s never seen it before.   Just to show you, here are some examples, using both popular & less popular songs – have fun trying to figure them out![1. Hints, in order: 80s rap, classic country, psychobilly, 90s one hit wonder.] ygF,fyR!2p if1a!brOf es.Es.ea8os cdtfith.H.s! -
Final tips & thoughts

• You can substitute an exclamation point (!) instead of the number 1 or the letter I.  Example: I love you becomes !Lu.
• Don’t use more than 1 number unless required by the password.  Why? because there are 10 possible numbers (0-9) while there are 26 possible letters – and that doubles to 52 when capital letters are used.  Using letters increases the complexity of a password and makes them much harder to figure out.

If you find this helpful – and I hope you do – please share!  Everyone needs to be secure because so much of our lives is online today.  If you have any suggestions, please share them in the comments!

Picture by BSantos