Pick Password Stories

Passwords. They suck, but we can make them safe and simple. And hopefully, you only need to create and remember one: your master password. Let your password manager deal with all the others.

From my Security in 60 Seconds series at iWelcome

False beliefs

Let’s kick it off by debunking some false beliefs. You shouldn’t need to keep changing your password, and you really don’t need funky characters or capitals for it to be strong.

We remember stories

What you should do, is make your password loooong. How? Think of stories, because we’re good at remembering those. Creating one is easy. Look and pick some random words around you, like pencil, bird and shoe. Maybe: birds like drawing shoes?

Make it weird

Of course, that’s nonsense. But nonsense is just what we need — rather than pet names, postal codes or favorite sports. And because it’s visual, our new password from just now will stick in mind, all 24 characters long. Safe and simple!