Online security has always been one of the aspects of our life that some people never take too seriously. Perhaps it is because many of us find it difficult to create long secured passwords.
I have had people ask me why they should have a long or good password on a Facebook account instead of using a mere abcd1234 or their phone number. Well, it contains your identity and personal details.
I simply ask them to think of all person can do if they can impersonate them. This extends to your email accounts as well as some of us store vital information there. Though not common here in Nigeria, identity theft can be used to ruin a person.
Passwords have always been the first step to secure your online accounts. Like the keys to the lock of your houses, a weak password can spell doom to the owner.
Passwords like that can be cracked easily by a hacker using brute force.
A good password is something that is long (probably more than 11 characters), contains UPPERCASE, lowercase, special symbols and numbers and unpredictable and probably not an English word. It has to be something no one expects.
Here I am going to point out the 6 ways I use to create my passwords so you too can generate a good password easily and lazily.
1. Using Your Email
Let’s say you have an alternate email that many people don’t know anything about, you can easily turn it into a password.
Suppose your email is chuksobi89@yahoo.com, it already has the components of a good password (alphabets, characters, and numbers)so we can easily tweak it to 89chUKs@OBiyAHoo. Notice that it contains 16 characters and all the components of a good password.
To add more fun to it, I can use the same password for Facebook and Twitter accounts by just adding a few more alphabets e.g fbk89chUKs@OBiyAHoo, 89chUKs@OBiyAHooTWIT.
2. Using Your Identity
We all have nicknames, some of which we are fond of, others not so much. Now I am not talking about the Peter to Pete type of nicknames. The native nickname you have can serve as a password. I can as well convert my native nickname evwie ovie ga to evwie_OVIE_89_ga@@? and that is a password.
3. Using Your Address
Suppose you live at “No 17, Ukodo Street, Agbarha Otor, Agbarha, Ughelli North LGA, Delta State.” You can convert this to a password using mnemonics.
Converted that will be “N17,US,AO,A,UNLGA,DS. We can further tweak it and maybe replace every comma with the “@” symbol and introduce camel case. This becomes N17@us@AO@a@UNLGA@ds. Trust me, that’s a nice password.
4. Using Your Favorite Movie, Song or Novel
I love movies and animations. I am a fan of the Japanese Anime Genre and I can generate lots of passwords from there.
One of My favorite anime is “Ansatsu Kyoushitsu” and my favorite character is “Koro-Sensei”. I don’t want to bore you but isn’t KoroAnsatsu@SenseiKyoushitsu incredibly long and secured?
Now you can possibly pick a song or movie or novel and also a line from it and maybe release year and convert to password e.g 18AreYouThor, GodOfHammers
5. Using Personal Questions/Details
We all have few simple personal questions that we can answer and convert to a password e.g. place of birth, year of birth, favorite snack or food etc..
You can just form your own questions and use the answers to create a password. For the above, mine would be Ughelli89@Banga. Also, your anniversary date plus a place you would love to go on vacation and favorite color or pet can serve as a password.
6. Using Your Language
Hackers rely on English dictionaries, trending words, phrases, and sentences to crack a password, but they don’t have the local Nigerian words/ language in their dictionaries.
Try using your language be it Spanish, French, Swahili. If you can’t use any of the above methods to generate a password, at least translate Key or Door or Lock to pidgin or your local language, mix it with numbers and characters and type it as a password.
In Urhobo, that would be Akpe usiaphre. As a password, it will be AkpeUsiaphre_89.
All password strength can be tested Here. Remember though, if you don’t keep your passwords safe and private and also avoid phishing sites, your online account is as good as toast cause a leaked password is as good as useless.
You check your passwords strengths on any of this site and let use the comment box to let us know what you think.
