Passwords

Your password is like a digital key. How do you select a good one?

• Passwords
• What Not to Use
• What to Use
• Choosing a Password

The object when choosing a password is to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to make educated guesses about what you have chosen. This leaves them no alternative but a brute-force search, trying every possible combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation.

What Not to Use

• Do not use your login name in any form... as is, reversed, capitalised, doubled, or whatever.
• Do not use your first or last name in any form.
• Do not use use your spouse's or child's name.
• Do not use other information easily obtained about you. This includes license plate numbers, telephone numbers, social security numbers, the brand of your motor vehicle, the name of the street you live on, and so on.
• Do not use a password of all digits, or all the same letter. This significantly decreases the time taken to search for it.
• Do not use a word, English or another language, contained in dictionaries, spelling lists, or other lists of words.
• Do not use a password shorter than eight (8) characters.

What to Use

• Use a password with mixed-case alphabetics.
• Use a password with non-alphabetic characters, that is digits or punctuation.
• Use a password that is easy to remember, so you do not have to write it down.
• Use a password that you can type quickly, without having to look at the keyboard. This makes it harder for someone to steal your  password by watching over your shoulder.

Choosing a Password

• Make up a phrase or choose a line or two from a song or poem. Use the first letter of each word.
  For example: "I played Snakes and Ladders when young" becomes "IpSaLwy".
• Choose two short words and concatenate them together with a punctuation character or number between them.
  For example: "goat%kit", "rain4dog", "mug+book"
• Alternate between one consonant and one or two vowels, up to eight characters. This provides nonsense words that are usually pronounceable, and thus easily remembered.
  Examples include "baxtquad" , "cotubive" , and so on.