What are some good ideas when creating a password?

Question: What are some good ideas when creating a password?

Answer: When you are creating a password, it is a good idea to make it difficult for others to guess but easy for you to remember. There are people out there that are trying to steal your identity by gaining access to personal information such as bank accounts, credit records, and social security numbers. The password that you put into place is your main defense to keep this information safe from other people. These thieves will use software tools to try and find what your password is, even by guessing every word in the dictionary. Therefore, you will not want to use a simple word from the dictionary. Passwords are always case sensitive, which means that it matters whether or not you use an upper case or lower case letter. It is a good idea for the characters in your password to include upper case (letters in capital), lower case, numbers, and punctuation marks. An example of a password that includes all things mentioned before would be “aPple4eWe? You can also switch out letters in your password for numbers or special characters, such as instead of using “password” you could try “p@s5W0rd” which has letters in both lower case and upper case, plus special characters and numbers. You can also set your password to be several words long, this is called a Pass Phrase instead of Pass Word. You still would want to try to use upper and lower case letters, numbers special characters. An example would be “Pay 7 nickels!”. A pass phrase adds extra security because it extends the length of characters in the password, which makes it more difficult to figure out. Just remember when making a password, mix it up, do something out of the ordinary and your password should be safe.

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