How do you remember all your passwords and keep them secure?

Having a strong and unique password for each account you have is an important security measure you should take. I know many people who are frustrated by trying to remember all of the different passwords they need to have. Some people give up and use one or two passwords for all their accounts. Or they make a list of their passwords and keep them on their phone, computer or written down in their wallet. Each one of these is a serious security weakness and can allow one breach of security to compromise all, or a number of your accounts.

If you are in this group I have a suggestion that will help. First, creating a strong password is important. It should never be a dictionary word, or sequential numbers or letters, and you should not use anything based from your personal data, like your birth-date. You should also have a unique address for each account. So with these simple criteria in mind here is a way that you can create strong passwords that are unique and that you can remember.

First we know that most passwords today require a mixture of letters and numbers and are generally between 6 to 10 characters long. With this in mind we can start to create a system for our passwords. Let's assume you need a pass word for Gmail. A simple way to create a unique password for this account would be to use four letters from Gmail and for numbers that you choose.





For example: gLmi3971  This system is the first letter, last letter(capitalized), second letter, fourth letter, then a set of numbers that you can use for each account. If I had a Yahoo account the password would be "yOao3971". This is a simple system that will give you a unique password for each account and all you have to do is remember your system for creating them. This is definitely better than using a single password or a dictionary word.

To increase the level of security you can increase the complexity of your system or vary it for different types of accounts. For example you might have one system for non-sensitive accounts and a different one for more sensitive accounts like bank accounts.