Coming Up With a Password

Here's the scenario: your workplace, online bank, and credit card company all require you to come up with a "strong password". Your workplace in particular requires you to change this password every 90 days for maximum security.

The requirement? The password must contain both capital and lowercase letters. And numerals. And symbols! And it can't contain any common "dictionary" words!! You find yourself sitting in front of the "Change Password" dialog box for 30, maybe 40 minutes trying to come up with a password that the system will accept as "strong".

Finally, you give up. "I'll just use a bunch of random letters, numbers, and characters," you say. Except that the next day when you try to log in, you can't remember your cryptic password, which was "5Hg&T#f90p@!1". And then again a week later you forget. And then again a week after that you forget, and your IT guy is about ready to strangle you.

There are easier ways to meet the criteria for a strong password. Here are some ideas that you can use to come up with unique, strong passwords that you can remember. You'll note that there is a common theme among all the ideas: the key is to come up with something familiar that contains both letters and numbers!

1. How about a song that contains both letters and numbers? Perhaps you're a big fan of 'hair bands', particularly Poison, and "7 Days Over You" is one of your favorite album tracks. Simply run the words together (keeping the capitalization) and put a character at the beginning or end of it:

• #7DaysOverYou


• 7DaysOverYou$


• *7DaysOverYou

2. How about a town and zip code that you once lived in, or of a relative or friend? The benefit here is that most city/town names aren't common dictionary words, so they usually meet the strictest password criterias. Here are a few examples:

• @SedonaAZ86339


• TacomaWA98402%


• Krumsville,PA19534

3. Maybe there's a car you once drove? Or one you dream of owning?

• 1971PlymouthCuda!


• 91PontiacTransSport&


• (88HondaCivicCRX)

4. On extremely tightened-down systems, the above suggested passwords still aren't strong enough. Something you can do to make these passwords even stronger is substitute numerals and symbols for similar-looking letters. By doing so, you can take even a fairly weak password like "Carrots" and turn it into a strong password like "C@rr0+$". Here are some classic numeral and symbol substitutions:

The key is to make a password that you can remember. If you use your first car as a password and the password expires, move on to the second car that you owned, then the third. That way, if you forget the following day that you changed your password, it will only take you one or two more attempts to remember what your new password is. (Most systems only allow 3 attempts before your account is locked up, so this is important.)

If you use ideas like the ones above, you can easily create strong passwords that you won't have to tape to the underside of your keyboard!