Tag Archives: strong passwords

Keep Safe Online, Security, Strong Passwords

The Only Password You’ll Ever Need

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Security experts tell us that we should have a different password for every account we use. That’s easier said than done, isn’t it?  If you’re tired of trying to remember obscure passwords for all of your online accounts, here’s a quick and easy way to streamline the process. There are a few ways that you could integrate this into your daily routine but that’s up to you. We’ll give you the basics, you adjust the parameters. Let’s get going:

First: 

Make a reasonably strong initial password. Here’s a link to our post on how to do exactly that: Passwords – How to create a good one. You can actually write the password down, that part won’t matter too much if someone else finds it.

System A: 

2. Let’s say that you’re going to sign in to your Outlook or email account. You would use the password you just created then add a letter that corresponds to the account you’re currently using. If your password is AbC54F (bad example, we know) then you would add an ‘o’ if you were using Outlook or a ‘g’ if you were signing in to Gmail. Whether you add the letter at the start or the end or the middle wouldn’t matter, as long as you remember where it goes, as in: oAbC54F or gAbC54F or AbC54Fo or AbC54Fg. Caps are possible too, of course.

You’re using a different password for each different account, that part satisfies the security experts, plus you’ve got only one thing to remember for each account, aside from the password itself. That one thing, the letter, is staring you right in the face so it’s a bit hard to forget. To make things a bit more complicated, you could add the same letter or the first two letters, one at the start and one at the end, to make your gmail password gAbC54Fm or oAbC54Fu for Outlook.

System B: 

While system A keeps the experts happy, you still have to remember the password as well as the lettering system you’ve set up. System B eliminates that problem but won’t satisfy the security peeps. For any account you use, add a punctuation mark or letter or number to one end of the password. In other words, you would enter the password, such as AbC54F, then put an ! at the start or a ? at the end, something like that. It doesn’t matter what you use, just remember where you put it. If you use the same punctuation mark, number or letter for every account, there’s virtually nothing to remember, except the initial password.

Photo of Mnemonic
Create your main password with mnemonics, then add something to it to keep it secure.

Mnemonics 

Use mnemonics to create the main password as described in our post, the link is at the top of the page. If that password is strong enough, and easy to remember, then you can use it for all of your online accounts using our ‘add something to it’ technique. Better yet, make up your own system using our basic instructions. A word, a year, something that is unique to you but, best of all, something that will be totally secure, even if someone gains access to your main password. Now you can forget obscure combinations of numbers and letters, leaving you more memory room for birthdays and anniversaries. How cool is that?

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Encryption, Privacy, Security, Shortcut keys, Strong Passwords, Windows

Encrypting Your Stuff – Create Very Strong Passwords

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There’s no sense in encrypting your personal files and folders if you don’t secure them with a strong password. Today, we’re going to show you how to do just that. You’ll create an easy to remember password that will lock your material tighter than Fort Knox.

1. There are some prerequisites to this course. In order to create this special password, you have to use a number pad, either the one on the right side of your full-size keyboard or the numbers you can access using the FN key on a laptop, for instance. Yes, there are numbers across the top of every keyboard but those are not the ones we want to use here. If you always use a full-size keyboard, make sure the NumLock key is pressed down. If not, figure out how to use the ‘other’ numbers, usually on the top of certain keys, like this:

Photo of Character Map Passwords 1
See the small numbers on top of some keys, even on top of number keys?

On this keyboard, you would press the FN key and the J or K or L key, etc. The normal number keys on the top row are not what you would use, except for 7, 8 and 9 with the FN key.

2. Ok, once you’re clear on that, let’s bring out the Character Map. Click on start, down on the bottom left of your taskbar, then type ‘charmap’ into the slot. Charmap.exe should show up but, if it doesn’t, type charmap.exe and press enter.

Photo of Character Map Passwords 2
It’s up at the top there, but you may have to type the full charmap.exe.

 

3. Welcome to Character Map! Here’s what you should see when you hit Enter:

Photo of Character Map Passwords 3
This is known as Character Map.

With this handy part of Windows, you can pretty much type any letter in just about any language. Symbols, archaic letters, they’re all here.

4. The default typeface for us is Arial. Your default typeface may be different. Here are some of our choices:

Photo of Character Map Passwords 3
Lots of choices here but make sure you remember which one you choose.

Whichever one you choose to create your password, make sure you remember it. Each selection here has a completely different set of characters. You can make a password out of any of them but you must remember which typeface you chose.

5. Once you make a selection, click on one of the letters/symbols. This is an example:

Photo of Character Map Passwords 5
This is an O, sort of, with two dots on top. See the keystroke on the bottom right?

This letter, according to Character Map is ‘U+OOD6: Latin Capital Letter O with Diaeresis’. Phew! Forget that, it’s not important. What is important are the words on the bottom right corner: Keystroke: Alt+0214.

6. Open Notepad. Use Notepad not Word or Wordpad. Notepad doesn’t mess with letters, it just shows what you type, nothing else. Once Notepad is open, Press the Alt key down and keep it down. On your number pad, type 0124 then let up on the Alt key. Like magic, this Ö appears. Practice in Notepad until you get it right.

Note: Not every letter or symbol has an ‘alt+number’ shortcut. Obviously you would choose ones with a shortcut, otherwise you have to copy and paste the symbol which wouldn’t be as easy. What we want here is to be able to type the symbol/letter without opening Character Map, right?

7. Now it’s time to play a little memory game. You can do this a few ways but here’s a suggestion. Look for a symbol that has a familiar number shortcut. In our example above, the shortcut is Alt+0214. Maybe 0214 are the last four digits of your phone number. Get it? Look for a combination that rings a bell and is something you can never forget; your age, your address, your shoe size, whatever. Once you have that symbol, you’re on your way to a very secure password.

8. The hard part is done. You have a symbol that pretty much locks up your password from anyone who doesn’t know your secret. You could still use something simple for the rest of the password but once you insert that symbol, it is very, very secure.

9. Here’s an example of an unbreakable password:     !pass0214ÖBod

For fun, we’ve put both the typeface we used, Bodoni, and the number you have to use with the Alt key to create the special character, Ö.

These are the basics and we’re sure you can create very strong passwords using this technique. Have fun with this and make sure you comment if you have questions about this.

TIP: Character Map is for reference only. You only need it to find the character you want to use and the numbers that create it with the Alt key. Character Map does not have to be open when you are typing the character.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Password Recovery, Privacy

Passwords – How to create a good one

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No visuals today, just common sense. As you know by now, about the only people you can keep out of your email and social networking accounts are your friends and hackers. Hackers in this case means people not associated with your government or your local authorities. The key to keeping your online accounts safe is a good password. The longer a password is, the stronger it is. The problem with this is that long passwords are hard to remember, right? Here’s how you can create a unique, reasonably hack-proof password.

1. Today we’ll use something named a mnemonic which will help you remember your new password. Mnemonics are easy ways to remember things, sometimes they are visual, sometimes they are simply bits of information that you remember easily because they are part of your everyday life.

Photo of Mnemonics 1
What a post about mnemonics without Keanu Reeves?

2. Let’s run through some things that are easy to remember. Your birthday, year of birth, address, first phone number, cell number, height, weight, first teacher’s name, first pet’s color, etc.

3. On your keyboard, each number and many letters type something different when you press the Shift key. Additionally, some numbers resemble letters. 3, for instance, could be an E or a zero could be an ‘o’. Let’s see if we can make something out of all of this:

Birth date: 1972

Height: 172

Street Address: 102 Moxley

Pet’s name: Ginger

If we mix and mingle these stray thoughts, we could come up with something like:  19!)@Mox&@Gin

How did we come up with this string of gibberish? 19 is obvious, first two numbers of the birth date. !)@ is 102 but typed with the shift key pressed.  Mox is obvious. &@ is the leftover part of the birth date while Gin is clearly part of the pet’s name.

Why not try this technique for one of your email accounts? Make sure it’s one that you have a second means of access, in other words one that has a security email account that will be contacted if you forget your password. Better yet, write the password down in Notepad and mail it to yourself at another email account. Use a clue word, something like pizza to search for. Don’t use ‘password’ since this is a dead give-away for anyone searching through your emails.

After you’ve created the password, try typing it a few times while running the original sources through your mind. You may see it as 19102Moxley72Ginger but don’t worry about it. Just remember to shorten the things that have to be shortened and use the shift key where necessary. It will begin to be like a rhyme, something that you won’t be able to forget if you wanted to! Our example is 13 digits, plenty long enough to stump even the smartest normal hacker out there. It would take a very long time for an average computer using brute force to crack it. Email providers and social networking sites lock your account anyway if you try the wrong password several times in a row.

Good luck and let us know if you’re got similar suggestions for a secure email.

Thanks for reading!