Strong and easy to remember passwords

How do you remember passwords that are as strong as those generated by a computer?

It is possible to create easy to remember passwords that are also strong, unique and secure.

Of course, in most cases, you should have no need to remember passwords. This is because you should be using a password manager.

With a password manager, you can have different, unique passwords for every website or online service.

And because password managers automatically log you into websites, they are not only the most secure way to manage passwords, but also the most convenient.

Still, from time to time you may need to have an easy to remember password that is just as strong as a random computer-generated one. For example, you need to commit to memory and never forget the password that unlocks your password manager.

Because the main password that unlocks the password manager also protects all your passwords stored inside it, it has to be a very strong and secure password that no one can guess and computers cannot break. Yet you have to memorize it, because writing it down defeats the purpose of having a highly secure password that no one else has access to.

Occasionally you may need to share a strong password with your spouse, friend or colleague. You should always share passwords through a password manager, but there may be situations when you need to share one outside of it. It should be an easy to remember password.

If you use a random password generator to create a strong, 20-character random password, you will not be able to remember it. If you eventually do memorize it, the risk of mixing up even one letter is too high. Since you can't write the password down, it is critical that you can always recall it.

You could generate a random 20-character password yourself. This is even worse, because you shouldn't be generating such passwords without a software password generator.

Random password generation is more complex than it appears. You will either create a password that is not strong enough or you will be unable to memorize it.

Fortunately, there is another method to generate easy passwords to remember that are  just as strong as random-generated ones.

Creating easy to remember passwords

To generate a strong password that you can remember, string together four or five random words. Words should make some sense only to you, so that you can remember the password.

The "make some sense" should be contextual, and the words must never form a sentence or a phrase. There must be no relationship between the words, except for you who know the larger context within which the words live.

This will make sense once you see an example, so let's create an easy to remember password that is strong, unique and secure, and explain the process of creating such a password.

The example password is:

"cable morning read breakfast dark"

Note: Do not use this password for anything, it is only an example to illustrate how to generate a strong password that is easy to remember.

How would you remember this password? The password is actually the end result of the context only you know. Here is the context:

I charge my phone with a cable in the morning while I read the news and eat breakfast. It is still dark.

This password is just as strong as a 20-character random-generated string of characters. In fact, it may be stronger, because it is longer than 20 characters.

It is very important that you don't create a sentence or a phrase. The words must appear random and unrelated to anyone or anything that doesn't know the context. Only you should know the context.

Passwords that use words, especially in English language, are usually weak. This is because the basic password attacks include dictionary attacks, and they break such passwords very quickly.

In a dictionary attack, the password cracking software uses a dictionary to try to guess the passwords. Adding a number or two in front of behind the one-word password doesn't help.

For example, if your password is "cable123", it will crack in a millisecond.

However, if you connect five random words (random to the password thief but not to you) together, the password becomes very strong. In this case the password cracking software must try all the combinations of words and line them up correctly.

And since it doesn't know how long each word is, it might have to resort back to treating the password as a string of characters rather than words, and this will considerably increase the amount of time - from centuries to millions of years - it takes it to go through all the combinations or characters for such a long password.

Homework

Do you need to use some easy to remember passwords? If so, review the current passwords you are using, and change them to passwords created using the method in this article.

You should only have very few passwords that you have to remember. That's good, because even with this method you won't be able to remember tens or hundreds of passwords. This is what a password manager is for.