Choose Passwords That Don’t Suck
Ah yes, the password. Keeper of secrets. Master of privacy. While a serviceable security mechanism, a bad password is a sure way to get your information stolen.
Make your password long, complicated, and random. Don’t use your pet’s name. Don’t use your birthday. People make the mistake of thinking a password should be an intimate, personal secret when, in reality, criminals and spies are very competent at ferreting out those personal details and using them against you.
So make a long, depersonalized, incoherent password, that looks like something a computer barfed up. Use numbers and letters and maybe bits of jargon. It’s better if you don’t use whole English words. For instance, instead of using the word “pamphlet” in your PW, you might write “pAMPh$3let.” The more random, the better.
If you want to take your own stupid brain out of it, you could use a password generator. And if you’re an Apple user, the company’s automatic strong password feature is fantastic.
