Creating passwords

Do you create your own passwords or use a password manager?

Below is an idea for creating your own passwords.

This idea is not original to me. However, I thought it worth sharing.

If like me, you have found a good password that is very difficult to guess to will have kept using it repeatedly. Firstly, because it’s hard to guess and secondly because you can easily remember it. This is OK until there is a data breach on one of the websites where you have used the password.

So, there needs to be safer way of generating passwords

This is the suggestion:

  • Generate 3 random words (either make them up or use one of the many online word generators).
  • Decide how many letters in each word (I chose 4).
  • Use one of the symbols: !@?*%& and others to separate the words and use at the end.
  • Replace any letter o’s with zeros (Æ)
  • Replace any letter i’s with 1’s.(1)

The advice is to keep changing them on a regular basis. This can be a problem and not something I’m very good at. Also, in a perfect world, make the password at least 16 characters long.

An example:



Hope becomes h0pe

Bird b1rd

Shot s0t

Use ! & to separate and $ and % at the end.

So the password would be

h0pe!b1rd&sh0t$%

I know it sounds like a lot of fuss and trouble but becomes quite easy with a bit of practice. Obviously, you can shuffle the words and symbols and generate new ones like those above.

The key is to record the passwords somewhere where you can find them!


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