Almost every day, the usernames and password credentials of millions of persons are being breached and sold on the dark web. According to this CNET Article, Over 2.2 Billion usernames and passwords are already on the dark web for free download.
Also, Forbes and Kimkomando have reported that over 147 million accounts have been pawned on the dark web in 2019. This has led us to create longer passwords that we hope we can use for a long time. But in this era, we have tons of accounts to login to, and it gets harder to create new passwords.
Except you are using a password manager, it will be very hard to create and manage multiple passwords for multiple accounts. Then again, passwords managers mostly autogenerate passwords that we can’t even remember. What happens when you have no access to your manager?
This has made many users use the same password for multiple accounts, a poor decision really. Today you are going to learn how to create better and safer passwords.
The rules
To create better passwords, there must be rules you should follow.
- Our password must be at least 12 characters long.
- Must contain at least one lowercase, one uppercase, one special character, and one number.
- Must be DIFFERENT for every site.
- Shouldn’t be entirely dependable on the sites, that store your password.
How To Create Better Passwords
First, we get a master password, say; c1P#er49, (you can get one using the method I outlined in my lazy guide to creating secure passwords here)
We can simply add the name of the website to the master password to make it more secure e.g If I were to create a password for Techcrub from that master password, I would have
- c1P#er49Burchcet. See that Techcrub is written backward?
Using the same template, my twitter password will be;
- c1P#er49Retttiwt. There I threw in an extra T to make it interesting.
I can decide to mix things and form a new template. That is adding the master password between the website name or adding the website name between the master password. e.g
- Burcc1P#er49hcet for Techcrub and Rettc1P#er49tiwt for Twitter.
c1P#Retttiwter49 for Twitter and c1P#Burchcurber49
If that is too confusing, simply throw in your username to make it easier. If my username is Ini49, then the password will be;
- Ini49c1P#er49Retttiwt or c1P#er49Ini49Retttiwt for Twitter
- Ini49c1P#er49Koobf or c1P#er49Ini49Koobf for Facebook
- Inn49c1P#er49Burchcet or c1P#er49Ini49Burchcet for Techcrub.
It is easier to create your own template using the template above for better security. Other ideas for creating a template can be
- 49c1P#erIni49Retttiwt
- 49Inic1P#er49Retttiwt
- c1P#er49INI49Retttiwt
- c1P#er49Ini49ReTTTiwt
- ReTTTiwtIni49c1P#er49
etc
Be safe
