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General => Technical Help => Topic started by: a j bayram on Tuesday 07 November 17 20:16 GMT (UK)
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I am having to consider changing various passwords due to a couple of hacks.
What suggestions can you offer for a more secure type of password to use?
Regards, Andrew.
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Take a sentence and turn it into a password. Something like "This little piggy went to market" might become "tlpWENT2m"
Sandra
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Why not use a password generator? https://passwordsgenerator.net/
https://identitysafe.norton.com/password-generator/
Stan
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The registration number of your first car may be a memorable password, and at least unguessable by an outsider.
So may your family's phone number when you were a child if it includes the exchange name, e.g. WHItehall1212.
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A strong password should contain:
- lower case letters
- UPPER case letters
- numerals
- other/special characters such as "!", "?", "@", "$" etc
Ideally it should NOT be a regular word!
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replace vowels in a memorable word with the 'equivalent' numbers ie: e becomes 3, a becomes 4, s becomes 5, o becomes zero
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Some (for example https://www.cyberaware.gov.uk/passwords (https://www.cyberaware.gov.uk/passwords)) advise using three random words. You just put them together, like 'coffeetrainfish' or ‘walltinshirt’
A longer password is harder for a computer to guess, but don't use words easy to associate with yourself (such as names of children).
Adding capitals and other special characters can further strengthen the password, though Cyber criminals know many of the simple substitutions.
It's also good to have different passwords for different accounts, so if a criminal manages to hack one site, they can't successfully use your username/email and password at another.
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I use Roboform to generate a new password for each account I open. I only have to remember one password - my master password - which then opens Roboform so I can see all the others. It works well for me.
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I've used poems!
start with "Jack-and-Jill" - when you need to change, move on to Went-up-the-Hill" etc
I've also used other memorable series of things in my childhood, such as names of aunts together with their phone number, or address
"Maura-30GroveRd"
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"Through 20 years of effort, we've successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess."
https://xkcd.com/936/ (https://xkcd.com/936/)
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I read a similar article a few weeks ago, I guess it makes sense if the passwords many of us use are computer generated, then it must be easy for another computer to guess them. My saving grace is that I have a different password for every website I use, so guessing one wouldn't do too much damage.
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Advice....
https://kongtechnology.com/2008/07/28/passwords-are-like-underwear/
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I find lines from Shakespeare good but turning them into letters both lower and upper case, numbers and characters.
This was a suggestion I got many years ago and have found it quite useful!
Caroline
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Thank you for the many and varied replies.
It's pleasing to note how helpful members of this site really are.
Time to pick an option.
Regards, Andrew.