Hackers, Hackers. Dangerous as hell, once you have something of value to them. They could be colleague, classmate, or even a lover. If you use Gmail, Yahoo!, MSN Messenger or you are active in forums, you’re at risk if you use weak passwords. If you use Adsense, Paypal and do online banking, you gotta come up with even stronger passwords.

Sometimes, you do come up with strong passwords, using unfamiliar random characters that are hard to break but also hard to remember at the same time. I have a friend who once kept his ATM Machine password in his wallet. How dumb is that? One fine day, he lost not only his wallet, but also $3000 (withdrawal limit for a day) from his bank. Nothing in the world could be done. In this case, even the bank’s cctv was useless.

A lot of sites that I googled suggested recording passwords on paper or storing it in password managers. That’s dumb cause the password manager will ask you for a password as well. Don’t you think you’d have to come up with an easier key password for the password manager so that you don’t forget? Imagine if you depended on it, and you lost your key password. Imagine if someone managed to break into your password manager. Imagine the loss. Imagine the sadness. There’s no safer place in this world to keep our passwords than the brain.

So here’s my method of coming up with super strong and easy to remember passwords.

Standardization And Uniformity

I suggest using all 3 character types below:

• Alphabets : abc … z
• Numbers : 012 … 9
• Mathematical Symbols : +-*/

Why just these 3? Cause some websites don’t allow spaces, @#$%^&* symbols, or even differentiate upper or lower cases. Let’s just keep it standard by using small case alphabets, numbers and basic maths symbols. This way, we keep our passwords uniformed and easy to remember.

Objects Around You

You can use tvs, flowers, soft toys, computers, tupperware, handphones, anything that you will come across everyday is most suitable. In this case, let me use my house’s toilet. In my house there are 3 toilets. And the toilet bowl and flush tank of all 3 are made by Armitage Shanks of UK.

Arranging And Combining

Think of ways to include alphabets, numbers and the math symbols together. For example,

• 3-armitage-shanks
• armitage-shanks-of-uk/3
• 2+1-very-smelly-toilets (I have 2 toilets upstairs and 1 downstairs)

That’s it. The 3 examples above are very very strong. Very, indeed. And I bet you can remember it easily. No writing down in paper, no keeping it in your computer. If you’re still not satisfied with the 3 steps above, here’s a fourth step, just for you.

Remove The Vowels

• 3-rmtg-shnks
• rmtg-shnks-f-k/3
• 2+1-vr-smll-tlts

Now it’s really much stronger! And you will still remember it really easily. Really.

Last but not least, check your password’s strength at Microsoft’s Password Checker. If passwords you own that guard important stuff is labeled as ‘weak’ or ‘medium’, change them immediately. Start making yourself easy to remember strong passwords. =)

Microsoft Password Checker
Check your password’s strength