Complexity
Another vital thing to consider is the complexity of your password. The best passwords combine different types of characters in various ways to make them difficult for hackers to guess or brute-force. This can include using lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
Try to create a sentence that you can easily remember. For example, if your favorite color is blue and your favorite number is 3, you might make the password “b3Lue!” This combination of simple words with different character types is easy to remember and hard for hackers to guess.
Unique To Each Site
Something that often gets overlooked and puts people at risk is not considering how unique a password is to each site. If you use the same password on multiple sites or slightly tweak it while still sharing a common theme, you open yourself up to significant risks like having your account hacked and your private information exposed.
It’s important to create unique passwords for each of your online accounts to avoid this. This means choosing different combinations of letters, numbers, and special characters for each site. For example, you might use “B33Lue!” for your email account and “T35T1ME!” for your bank account. Doing so will help protect your information on each site and prevent hackers from gaining access to any of your other accounts if they get one password.
Creativity
Odds are you already know it’s a bad idea to use your name, your pet’s name, or something else that is easily guessable or looked up on Google. However, you can take it further by incorporating creative elements into your password. This could mean using symbols from pop culture like the Lightning Bolt from Harry Potter or obscure references to celebrities like King Tut.
By doing so, you can create passwords that are easy for you to remember and incredibly difficult for hackers to uncover. For example, you might use the password “H2ll0!HarryPotterâš¡” or something similar when creating an account on your favorite social media site.
