Not long ago one of my friend’s Yahoo! account had been hacked. Lot of personal information and important mails were lost. My friend claimed his password was secure, but to test his claim I installed a keylogger on his computer without his knowledge. Through this I came to really know how secure his password really was - it was his DOB ! And this was what led me to compile an article for creating secure passwords.

Below is a list of what not to do when creating a password:

1. Don’t use a password that you’ve used elsewhere.
2. Don’t use keyboard patterns (qwerty) or sequential numbers (1234).
3. Don’t use repeating characters (sss777).
4. Don’t use a password that is listed as an example of how to pick a good password.
5. Don’t use passwords that are based on personal information that can be easily accessed or guessed.
6. Don’t make your password all numbers, uppercase letters or lowercase letters.
7. Don’t use words that can be found in a dictionary.
8. Never tell anyone your password or security question and answer.
9. Never send this information by email.
10. Don’t use any part of your login name as the password.
11. Don’t use online storage for passwords.
12. Never write down your password in the first place.
13. Do not type passwords on computers that you do not control.
14. Never store your password in a program.
15. Don’t use a common one, like LAN or IUPAC. Combine your acronym with numbers and punctuation marks.

And here are some tips to remember while creating a secure password:

1. Use at least six characters.
2. Include punctuation marks.
3. Mix capital letters, lowercase letters, and numbers.
4. Include character substitutions, such as the number zero for the letter ‘o’ or # for the letter ‘H’.
5. Include phonetic replacements, such as ‘Liv 2 Dy’ for ‘Live to Die’.
6. Find ways of getting random letters and numbers such as opening books, looking at license plates or taking the third letter from the first ten words you see.
7. Think of a sentence that you can remember, and use the keywords you can remember.
8. Use the characters like ” ‘ ; : ? and others rather than the special characters available with the SHIFT key held down.

To test the strength of your passwords, you can use a Password Checking Utility like the Microsoft Password Checker. There are more sites to check your password, but i suggest you to use the Microsoft site since it is secure and trusted.