eli5: How does adding numbers or symbols to a password make it more secure? If those characters are already in the list of options a hacker has to try then wouldn’t having them or not be irrelevant?

Question

A hacker still has to try every combination when brute-forcing a password, don’t they? If my password was long enough why wouldn’t any type of characters be fine?

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Best answer given by /r/danceswithsteers below: [https://xkcd.com/936/](https://xkcd.com/936/)

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Because they don’t try passwords at random they have list of passwords that are common and with variations that they go through in order of rarity.

If that fails then then you go through every possible password if you really and even this isn’t truly random because you’ll usually attempt all passwords of common lengths first.

It’s far easier to defeat the human than the computer.