Easy to remember unique passwords

Passwords. There are so many places we use them. People who post here probably have a Google password, one for Amazon, one for their bank and of course one for HubPages itself. Most of us have many, many more.

How do you keep track of them? Do you let your browser memorise them for you? That's certainly convenient but what if your computer is stolen? Oops, the thief has access to everything. Or what if it crashes and can't be fixed? Do you remember those passwords?

There are tools that can help. There are password managers where you have a master password and it stores everything else. That's better than letting your browser store them, but it still can be a hassle if you lose your computer and they do you no good if you have to use someone else's computer in an emergency or while on vacation, visiting relatives or whatever.

Many people just use the same password everywhere. That's not great, because if somehow that password gets found out, whoever finds it gets immediate access to everything.

I have a better way.

First, you need to memorize an eight or nine character password. I like to use a mnemonic aide to help with this part. This would be a phrase you can easily remember which then gets translated to the password. For example, the phrase "Very tough for you, but not for me!" creates the password "Vt4u,bn4m!". That is a decent password, but it's not what we are going to use.

The next thing you need is an algorithm. That's just a fancy word for method. What you are going to do is decide how you will create passwords. Your method might be "First, upper third, fifth". What does that mean? Let's take an example. You want a new password for HubPages. You are going to use the domain name (that's hubpages.com), your mnemonic password and your method to create a unique password for HubPages. Here's how it works:

Take the first four characters from your mnemonic. That's "Vt4u". Add the first letter from the domain, "h". Add the third, but make it upper case, so "B". Add in the fifth, "a" and then the rest of your mnemonic. You end up with "Vt4uhBa,bn4m!". That's a great password, but it's very easy for you to remember.

If you did the same thing for Google, you'd get "Vt4ugOl,bn4m!". Unique, but easy for you.

I'd actually use a longer algorithm to extract four or more letters from the domain if possible.

I also take this one step farther. I use one algorithm for .com, another for .org and a third for everything else. You could also do something different when the domain uses "www" by default.

The algorithm can be much more complex. You could say that if the domain starts with a letter less than "m", you'll use the last part of your mnemonic first. The only limit here is your imagination - you never have to write down a password or memorise anything but your mnemonic and your algorithm. You could even be really creative and make the mnemonic spell out the algorithm. What do you think of "First, forward 2, back one if m or less, then upper forward 3". That's "F,f2,b1imol,tuf3".

Note: If you use a very complicated algorithm and have just a little programming skill, you might consider writing a little script that accepts the domain name as input and spits back your password. I don't recommend that, however because if you lose the script, you have the same problems I talked about originally.

Got it? Strong, unique passwords that don't have to be written down. But even if you wrote "F,f2,b1imol,tuf3" in big letters above your desk, that wouldn't help anyone very much, would it? They wouldn't know what it means. But you do.

Update

In January of 2012, we had another very bad Facebook problem where passwords were exposed. Many people still use the same password everywhere, so other accounts were also compromised.

Don't make that mistake.

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