LinkedIn got hacked and we heard it. Techradar got hacked and we heard it once more. We all know it. But we don’t do it. We all know that we should have unique passwords for different websites but how do we remember hundreds of them. Here is something that I would suggest. Something simple, easy and it works!
The scheme
Let me first describe the scheme. Let’s consider that you have to remember the unique passwords of 3 different websites:
• Facebook
• Hotmail
• LinkedIn
(Read more: How MIT website got hacked despite having any vulnerability ?)
The first step is to create a scheme or template for your password. Here are some possible example:
Example 1: You can build your unique password by combining in the following manner: First Letter of the website+ Last letter of the website+ your easy password+ some special characters
Let’s assume that your easy password is “mypasswd”. Now that’s a lame password just for example. You can use a non-guessable password.
Let’s assume that “some special characters” are – @#$5
So you can build your unique passwords as follows:
• Facebook: fkmypasswd@# (first character of the website: ‘f’ ; last character: ‘k’)
• Hotmail:hlmypasswd@#$5
• Linkedin:lnmypasswd@#$5
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Example 2: You can create more complicated schemes which are function of the name of the website. First two characters in reversed order+ your easy password+ special characters+ last two characters of the site
• Facebook: afmypasswd@#$5ko
• Hotmail: ohmypasswd@#$5li
• LinkedIn: ilmypasswd@#$5ni
In this way you can create hundreds of unique passwords and all that you need to remember is just “your easy passwd” and a scheme.
PS: Please note that the above scheme should be used as a model and not an exact solution. You can create your own password as a function of the website name. However ensure that “your easy password” is non-guessable/non-dictionary words and the “special character” string is at least of length 3 or more.
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Comments
Here again Twitter got hacked and 250000 user passwords stolen!
It's not just unique passwords but regular change of these passwords is also a must...any thoughts?
Usually you have the same password across different platforms with very predictable variations.One Reason for choosing similar kind of password is obviously ease,which becomes the ease factor for the hackers too!
But such incidents only remind you "you are as strong as the weakest link"...and in this case the weakest link is all the passwords are linked/similar.
That's a great thought for PASSWORD genertion. Also we can use the same technique with PASSPHRASE for more strength.
A very neat way to remember the unique passwords !