Tech 101: Setting Secure Passwords - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Passwords have become very important and they need to be more complicated then they were in the past. Most sites that require a password want it to be at least eight characters. They encourage you to use numbers, capital letters, lowercase letters and symbols. Here is what I do with my passwords. I actually have two main passwords. One is for my secure information, things like my bank, my credit cards and the other one is for my non secure information, like my 'create a card. com' account or when I log on to my daughter's school information. The reason I keep them separate is so that someone breaks into the data base at 'create a card. com' and steals my password, they do not have my password for my bank. What I have started doing is trying to come up with little phrases that I can remember and creating passwords from them. In other words, you could do something like, make my day and use a capital M in make, a capital M in my and perhaps a capital D in day or love me today, capital L in love, capital M in me then maybe the number 2 for 2day. The reason I use little phrases is because I can remember them. Now I do not count on remembering my passwords, so what I recommend is that you write them down. I do not necessarily recommend keeping them on a list in your computer. That could be one place that they are located. I think it is essential that you write them on a piece of paper, somewhere in your home and hide that. It can be a sticky note underneath your keyboard. Could be in the back of your address book or some kind of log or ledger that you keep in your home. I personally travel a lot from place to place. I keep a 3 x 5 card in my wallet in my checkbook with a list of all the locations that I log into and the password for each location. I have actually created a little code for my passwords so that if someone go my 3 x 5 card, they would not know my password but from the letters I have written down I know my passwords. So keeping a list in the computer is great, if you have password protection in some kind of internet security program, fine, but do not count on other people to remember this stuff for you. If the computer crashes, you have lost your passwords. Again write them on a piece of paper and stash them someplace, and maybe even tell a loved one where that is, just in case something happens and they need to know your passwords, they can access them. Something that is really cool that I am seeing more and more of these days is when your signing up at a new website and you need to create a password, they are allowing you to see what they would consider your password strength to be. So as you type, you see that it becomes from weak to strong. I will do that again, first of all it want a minimum of eight characters, if I just put in eight characters it goes form weak to strong. If it does not think that it is long enough or it is strong enough it is going to tell you and that is a helpful indicator of just how strong your password will be.
