How to Create a Strong Password for your Accounts in 2021

Often there is really only one thing standing between your sensitive information and criminals -- your password. Your password is that string of characters that allows access to a computer system or service. A strong password is important because if someone has access to your password means they can also have access to sensitive information such as your mail, bank details, credit card information, and so on.

It is important to know what makes a password strong and secure. The easy route is to have a simple password that works everywhere. Unfortunately, this can be a problem. It is like using the same key for all your properties. It is not only costly if you lose the key but also if a thief finds it. In 2021 hackers don't go through the stress of guessing passwords, they have computer programs that can make millions of guesses until something works and if they already know information about you it's even easier.

When you want to create a password that is easy to remember, your first line of thought might be a nickname, birthday, pet's name or phone number, but these things are too easy for criminals to discover using instruments like Facebook, so don't use them your password should not include information about you. There are ways to have memorable but hard to guess passwords. A strong password should have a mix of upper and lowercase letters numbers symbols and should
be of some decent length.

5 steps to create a strong password

1. First, don’t be lazy. Do not use easy words or patterns like admin, 1234, aaaaa, qwerty, password, etc
2. Choose a password with mixed-case letters, numbers and symbols (example: !, $, #, %).
3. Choose a password that is NOT related to anything that has special meaning to you, ie: your pets name, birthday, address, family members names, etc.
4. Don’t use a word that is found in the dictionary. You can switch up the word by replacing the I’s with 1′s, or the O’s with 0.
5. Choose a password that is 8 characters or longer.

For example, the sentence "I want you to share and comment on this article". To construct a complex looking and hard-to-guess password from this sentence, first,

• I select the first character of my password. I can replace the letter I with a number '1'.
• Then, the next word 'want', we write 'w' for this.
• I can then write the letter 'u' in place of  'you'. 
• The next word, 'to' can be replaced with the number '2'.
• The next 'share and comment'. For this I to use capital 'S' for this share, and for 'and' I am going to use the symbol '&' and then I will use a capital 'C' for comment.
• Picking the first letters of the remaining words I have 'ota'. I can replace 'o' with the number '0' 

Putting all these together it results in "1wu2S&C0ta"

This is a sample of a strong password which is easy to remember and hard to guess.


Lastly, you can make use of password keepers like Keepass, Dashlane, Lastpass, or 1Password. These password management programs will help you manage your passwords securely through a series of encryptions. With most, your passwords are stored behind a master password. You only need to remember that one password to access the rest. These programs will even generate safe passwords for you to use.


If you've got questions you can leave them in the comments section and you can also share this article to help your friends protect themselves too.