Passwords: How to make an easy to remember secure password.
Passwords are often a bone of contention. In a perfect world we
would not need them, or keys to our house, car, chip and pin
etc.
We have written elsewhere that for
a few pounds (or possibly less) an unscrupulous person with the
right knowledge can hire a computer from Amazon (or any other
computer cloud provider) which has enough power to crack a 6 or 7
letter password in few minutes. This is a password of the type
GzN73i! In other words random characters.
It is true to say that random characters are probably the most
difficult for people to remember. What does this mean? Over the
past twenty years computing security has evolved to the point where
we have difficult to remember passwords which can be easily
cracked.
In case we need reminding, the original idea behind a password
was it was easy for you to remember and difficult for someone else
to crack. Now this cracking can be done in a few minutes by someone
with the right skills, access to the interweb and possibly the
wrong motives.
We also probably have dire warnings from IT or HR concerning
divulging your password - namely taking the "sensible" approach of
having it on a "post it" note on the side of the screen.
So how should we go about having memorable passwords that are
difficult for the bad guys to guess?
I have a terrible memory, especially for people's names, so when
I met a nice lady called Melony (or Mel as she prefers), the
thought of a Melon, or indeed a couple of firm ripe Melons, it
helps me remember her name. It seems if we can link something to a
picture, it becomes that much easier to remember. Mel is very easy
to remember.
There was an article recently which offered a solution for
passwords: use four unrelated words and just remember a silly
picture of them:
Now I don't know why bananas are silly or suggestive, but this
was the least suggestive and silly picture I could find.
So my password is BananaHeadLionWorld (possibly with an
exclamation mark). Well what a coincidence: this is a theme park
near you! But I've only told you once, and if you have looked
and memorised the pictures and for some reason all those mentalist
people say this is the best way to memorise a random list. A random
list is after all what your password should be. So next time you
need to create a password, think of four familiar objects and use
their names. You have already memorised your new password.
