It is recommended that all passwords created for online accounts are complex to minimise the changes of any one of them being guessed, and that unique passwords are used for each account. This means being long (at least 12 characters) and including a mix of lower case, uppercase, numbers and symbols.
This makes it hard to choose passwords that are memorable but there are ways if making this easier. Firstly, the things to avoid are: -
- Using simple passwords such as : password, abc123, 12345678
- Using your name, pet's name or, ideally, any unaltered dictionary word
- Using your initials, date of birth or other personal information that a hacker might have access to
You might tempted to meet stringent password requirements with something like Rachel1234! but this is not particularly secure and could be guessed quite easily, particularly if the user's name was Rachel.
Instead, try starting with a short phrase or word combination of at least three words, substituting some letters with numbers or symbols. An example might be: Gr33nTigerStr!pes.
An alternative approach is to:
- Use a password generator, which are sometimes available with an application and generate unique combinations of letters, numbers and symbols.
- Combine this with a secure password manager so that passwords that are difficult to remember can be accessed in a secure when when required.
Passwords should never be written down or stored in plain text in easily accessible document format.