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How to have a different password for every website, have them complex and remember them all.
Too good to be true?
I can help you with a very simple, memorable method of having lots of different passwords (one for every site) and complex enough to keep the internet police happy and you’ll remember them all.
No it’s really simple. Here are three steps.
You get to a site you haven’t visited in a while and you are faced with the dreaded password box.
Oh, you don’t remember. What’s that? you wrote it down somewhere safe but the dog ate it.
OK you can reset it right? but you are not allowed to use a password you have used before. The new one you’ve just thought up is brilliant but computer says no. Not complex enough. – The last thing you need is more complex!
1. You need to think of a small 6 or seven letter and number combination that you can easily remember. NOTE – this will form part of every password and will always be the same. It only forms PART of the password so you will be fine. Trust me read on.
Here is an example: Imagine you had a personalised number plate, a really expensive one. Mine would be itgod1 – Well I can dream.
You can use word from a book title, first name of the author? or even your pet’s name. Just put a number at the end. Maybe your house or flat number. “MAKE it EASY on yourself” as the song goes.
2 If you are visiting a site take the first and second letter from the site name. Example Amazon.co.uk would be A and m
3 Capitalise them Capital A capital M.
Place them as the first and last letter of the password and use a hyphen – to separate them from your main password.
That’s IT.
Example If my main part of my password is ‘itgod1’ and I’m logging into the amazon website my password would be A-itgod1-M
You don’t have to remember it because it is the same for every site but different. Same but different, more examples please? here you go.
For Barclays bank site B-itgod1-A
For National Lottery site N-itgod1-A
For DVLA site to renew your car tax you only do that once a year so it would be impossible to remember but you can work it out D-itgod1-V
The itgod1 bit NEVER changes. This fills in the gap between your brains ability to recall and the computer security systems need to keep out the bad guys.
So how to put this into action?
You choose a six digit password that you can easily remember that will always be the same, never change and has a number at the end.
Then, as you log into each of the sites over the coming months and year, change each password in turn to fit this rule. Now you can throw away the paper or little book of passwords that you should not have had anyway and life is easier.
What if a site insists you change a password often, say at work, your login password has to change every 42 days or something just long enough to mess with your head.
Well change the number. itgod1 becomes itgod2 or itgod22 the rest stays the same. Amazon is now A-itgod2-M.
It is important to remember to keep the middle bit the same at all sites. If you change it once, then change it everywhere.
OR if you are smart enough to remember that only your work password changes every 42 days or so then just change that one and keep all your ONLINE web passwords as discussed.
Why does this work?
Well from a password complexity point of view it ticks these boxes
• More than 7 characters long
• Uses both upper and lower case
• Uses a special character
• Contains numbers and letters
It is also different for every site and most of all, once you start using it you will never forget it trust me.
In your life, you have to remember many passwords and it is frustrating, complicated and makes your head hurt. Hopefully this has made life a bit easier for you.
Please let me know how you get on.
