How do you come up with a password?

Answer 1

Some people just use the name of there cat or dog.

(very low security and easy for anyone who knows the person to work out).

Others use combinations of words and numbers which that person relates to

a particular place, person or thing.

(these are a lot easier to remember and are secure)

Some choose random numbers and letters

(these are normally hard to remember, but most secure).

The longer the password the safer it is.

Answer 2

What to do?

1. Use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.
2. Combine lower and uppercase letters.
3. Use at least 9 characters--the more the better.
4. Use sentences--these are nearly impossible to crack.
5. Substitute symbols like ! for i $ for S if allowed.
6. Change your password periodically.
7. Write the password in a safe place in case you forget.
8. Use the first letter (or last letter) of each word in the stanza of a poem.
9. Combine a couple of foreign words, or letters of a foreign phrase.
10. Prepend symbols and numbers rather than append them. For example, $5passphrase is stronger than passphrase$5.
11. Insert one or more upper ASCII characters (127-255) if possible.

What not to do?

1. Don't give password to anyone or reuse your password elsewhere.
2. Never use password, username, letmein, or iloveyou.
3. Never use your name, nickname, names or birth dates of family members.
4. Never use a proper noun or any dictionary word.
5. Don't use obscene words--these top password cracker lists.
6. Don't use computer model names.
7. Do not use automobile makes and models.
8. Don't use titles of movies, games or books.
9. Do not use the names of sports teams.
10. Do not use names of candy bars or soft drinks.
11. Don't use colors.
12. Don't use simple numbers like 1111, 12345, or pi.
13. Never use keyboard patterns like QWERTY or ASDFGH
14. Don't use common phrases.
15. Don't use your driving license or social security number.
16. Don't use your credit card number.
17. Don't use phone or fax numbers.
18. Don't make your password difficult to memorize.

Many passwords require at least one number or symbol (non alphabetic character) and most must be be 6-14 characters long. The longer a password is, the safer it is, but the longer it takes to key it. You might use something such as the last name of your favorite musician and insert some random number. Make sure it is something you can memorize.

A good password manager can help prevent the loss of passwords. However, all password manager programs require a Master Password which must be strong and difficult to guess. Users need to be very careful not to lose their Master Password.

Answer 3

It should be long enough, it should have both upper and normal case letters, as well as numbers and special characters if allowed. using different languages also helps (part in latin, part in cyrillic for example). You should also avoid using common used passwords like your name, date of birth etc.

Answer 4

Making a BAD password

1. Make it really easy and use your computer userid, or your name as your password. That's what all good computer crackers try first.
2. If you don't like that, use your nickname, your middle name, your student ID number, your phone number, your birthday, or other information about you that anyone can get from the student directory.
3. Use the name of your girlfriend/boyfriend, spouse, pet, or child. [If you have seen the film War Games you may remember that the password to the supercomputer was the name of Professor Falken's son, Joshua.]
4. Use words or names from Sci-Fi or Fantasy Books or movies. Computer nerds love these so they are easy to guess. If you use names from literature or ancient mythology you will keep the geeks out and let in only the well-read crackers.
5. If you want to make them work only a little bit harder, use a dictionary word. Now that there are on-line spelling dictionaries it is easy for someone to write a program to try all of these until they get the right one. It's slow, but it works eventually. In most cases the cracker doesn't care which password he cracks, as long as he gets one of them, so the weakest password will let him into the machine. It could be yours!
6. You can make it easy for someone standing near you (a "shoulder surfer") to guess your password by choosing a sequence of keys which are really obvious when typed, such as "12345".

Making a GOOD password

1. The best password is a mixture of letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters. The more complex and random it is the harder it will be for someone else to crack. Of course it may also be hard for you to remember, so you should try to choose a complicated password which is also relatively easy for you to remember, but hard for someone else to guess.
2. Use at least 6 characters in the password. Shorter passwords are easier for computer programs to guess. Newer versions of Unix require that you use at least 6 characters in a password, and that at least one of them not be a letter. But remember that most Unix passwords are only 8 characters long - any extra characters are simply ignored. That seems to be true on AOL too.
3. Just adding a number or punctuation mark to a word can make a password a bit more secure, but if it's a dictionary word then this will probably not enough. One well known cracking program easily caught the password "offbeat1". A better combination would be "off1beat".
4. Use fragments of words mixed in unusual ways that would not be found in a dictionary, or take a compound word and swap the pieces in an unusual way. The password just suggested above is even better if you swap the first and last parts.
5. Obscene words are generally not good passwords, even though they may not not be in on-line dictionaries, because many cracking programs check for these separately.
6. Take a word and substitute a symbol or number for one or more letters. But be unusual. Many cracking programs already know enough to try a "$" in place of an "S", or a "1" in place of an "I" or "L". It's better to just insert punctuation, numbers, or special characters at random in the middle of a word.
7. One way to make a good password is to take the first letters of a phrase you can remember. Use a poem you like, a song lyric, or a quotation you can remember - the more obscure the better. A phrase that only means something to you is even better. This produces a sequence of letters which you can remember, but which nobody else can easily construct, nor remember if they see it. The password will be even better if you insert or substitute punctuation and numbers, as in the previous rule.
8. Another way to make a good password is to interleave two words, or a word and a number. For example, mixing "July" and "1776" gives "J1u7l7y6". (But that's a bad example, because it's a well known date - use something more obscure.)
9. OLD car license numbers (or aircraft "N" numbers) make good passwords, but the license number of the car you are driving now could be easy for someone else to guess. "NCC-1701" is not a good password - too many crackers watch Star Trek.
10. Words from other languages are better than English dictionary words, but can still be cracked if the cracker has an on-line dictionary in that language (many are easily available). Applying some of the tricks mentioned above to foreign words can lead to a good password, as long as you can still remember it.
11. Another way to generate a password which someone else can't guess is to use input from a physical object in your possesion. For example, the serial number on the bottom of my answering machine is "93-195M", and that is a good password which cannot be guessed by a dictionary program. But be careful with this method. If someone in my department knows I pick passwords this way, then one of the first things they will do is look at the bottom of my answering machine. Of course they have to get into my office to do so, which excludes a large number of people, but not everybody.
12. Along the same lines, the serial number of a dollar bill, or some subsequence derived from it, can be used as either a password or as a good reminder of a password. Keep the bill in a safe place - don't spend it. You can even share the password with someone else by tearing the bill in half. This kind of shared secret only costs $1.
13. Fortune cookies, which you can get at just about any Chinese restaurant, can be used to construct a password using words or numbers taken from the fortune. You can even carry the fortune in your wallet as a reminder, as long as you don't mark on it, which would give away the secret if it fell into a stranger's hands.

Answer 5

examples: 3-5 numbers. 4-16 letters. like: 12344tjjason. but does not have to be so long. here is a short good password: 777tj00. Rules for making passwords: use a password similer to your username. dont use phone numbers or emails (Unless told so) never give somone your password (Ever!!!) dont make password two obvies like: Joehankson. lots of people can copy that. so yeah now you know how.

Answer 6

There are two factors that make passwords stronger. The first is length. It has harder for some unauthorized person to figure out your password if it has more characters to it rather than fewer; 8 characters is much better than 4. The second factor is using a wide variety of characters, so that means lower case and upper case, numbers, symbols, everything that is on your keyboard. The more different kinds of characters you use, the more different possible passwords there are, for that number of characters. So while a password such as tkwumb is not that strong, a password like yu*~KLomd% is much stronger. I guess the other necessary reminder is not to be obvious. If you use "password" as your password, or "1234" or your own date of birth, you are asking to be hacked.