Tips for Remembering Strong and Complex Passwords

Until a horrific sci-fi future actually comes around, for now the only place hackers cannot enter is your head. Wherever something is connected to the internet – be it a smart fridge, computer or car – hackers could be able to break in, steal data and wreak havoc. So, at first glance, the only secure place where all your precious information must be stored is your brain. Pretty logical, eh?

In theory, yes, but things end up slightly differently in real life however. It is possible to remember strong and complex passwords thanks to a number of various tricks. Still, the human memory capacity reaches its limit at a certain point, so remembering every one of your passwords is a feat that might take Superman levels of skill. There are three simple tricks to help you remember those complex passwords, though, unless of course you use a single password for all accounts, which is really not recommended.

If you like reading books, this will likely become your favorite method. Pick a book from the shelf and open it at a random page. Select a favorite paragraph and pick a word from within. That will be the basis of your password.

As an example, we used Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. We randomly opened it at page 57 and found the word “motorcycle”, which is the 24th word on the 18th line in the fifth paragraph. After adding some extra measures for security, the full password looks like this: 24&MotorCycle#5718.

Using the same book and example as above, it is possible to easily remember your password even if you reverse the words and add some ‘salt’ to increase the level of security. The line that was selected was “borrowed a motorcycle one Sunday and headed for the hills”. For this purpose we selected only “motorcycle one Sunday” and reversed the words to create this “yadnusenoelcycrotom”.

Other punctuation and characters can be added, and it will be better to play with uppercase and lowercase styling to increase the strength of your password. After all this the password looked like this: “y@dnus#3n0elCycrotoM”. Using your favorite numbers will ease the process of recalling the password, but keep in mind that it will ultimately weaken your passwords if used too many times, as hackers will begin to recognize the pattern if they are targeting you specifically.

Known American cryptographer Bruce Schneier has an easy yet effective method to create and remember passwords: we all have favorite songs, poems, or quotes, so why wouldn’t we turn those into passwords? Yes, it is that easy: just take one line or sentence and use your own rule to create a password you will be able to recall at any time. For example: “I want to break free” (Queen) = 1W@tBr3aKfeR!

Password manager

Have you counted how many passwords you have? If you have 10 or fewer, the probability of using the same password for different accounts is quite high, which only means you’re putting yourself at a greater risk. Passwords shouldn’t be easy to remember, because that means it is easy for hacking software to guess them.