Recommendations to create strong passwords

The creation of passwords is very important to protect your computer and data. You should ensure you have strong passwords for all accounts on your computer. For some unknown reasons, internet users make very little effort to protect their critical data.

Here are a few tips on how to create or select safe passwords.

You should be aware that hacking software tests all the dictionary words, all names as well as combinations of numbers and dates.

Therefore :

1) Do not use : your name, surname, date of birth, those of your children, grand-children or your pet names.

2) Never use the most frequently used passwords such as QWERTY, 123456, password, 0000, baseball, football, letmein, etc...

3) You should rather create sentences that only you can easily recall, because they mean something to you only. The best solution would be to invent abstract acronyms which make sense only to you, i.e.: IHJCAGPW ( which means : I have just created a great password). Please note this is only an example.

4) Include numbers, special keyboard characters and capital letters (some sites even oblige you in this manner).

To make things even more difficult, the password mentioned above could then become :
                                             IHcAGpW UT12H!
(Which means : I Have created A Great passWord Unknown To 12 Hackers !).

Another example : I live at 24 Kingston Avenue, London W.12 could translate into :  
                                               Ila24kinAvew12.

You can of course invent simpler or more complex acronyms as long as you have found an easy or logical way to remember them. Remember however to always use diverse lettering. (1)

5) Never use the same password for all sites. To get around this, you could use a common password and attach a different prefix or suffix to remind you the different sites it applies to. For instance for your Facebook account, you could add -Fb :
                                              IHJcAGpW UT12H!-Fb
and for your hotmail account, add !-hM which then reads:
                                              IHJcAGpW UT12H!-hM
and so forth.

6) Keep a complete list of all your passwords on a USB stick and also print that list. Do not leave this information on your computer’s hard drive.

7) To check how strong your passwords are, use this link :

http://comparitech.net/password-strength/

or

https://www.vpnmentor.com/tools/passwordmeter/

(You will notice that the two last passwords created above are 100 % secure)

(1) For those who travel internationally, I recommend using only characters which are common to the AZERTY and the QWERTY keyboards. For example, letters with regional accents (é, è, ë, à, ô ) do not exist on English/American keyboards , I therefore advise not to use them at all.