Why is 3 random words as a password better than a load of random characters?
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A password serves it’s purpose best when it is easy for you to remember and difficult for a computer to guess.
Some would say that using numbers and special characters in your password makes it harder for a computer to guess it. They are wrong! The computer guessing would have no way to know in advance that you didn’t use any numbers or special characters. Therefore, it will still guess them. So, it doesn’t matter at all which characters you use.
Length does matter. This is because a computer would try all the shortest passwords first, and work it’s way towards longer passwords over time. Let’s say a computer can guess 100,000 passwords a second, and that you can use 26 upper and 26 lower case letters, 10 digits, and 20 special characters to make the password. It can guess all the 3 character passwords in about 5 and a half seconds. It can guess the 4 character passwords in 7 and a half minutes. But 5 characters? It’ll take over 10 hours. Adding more length makes it far more difficult for your password to be guessed.
So the question is how do you make a long password that you can also remember well? Because that’s what makes a password good, being long and memorable such that you can use it but it can’t be guessed easily by a computer. One great way to do that is by creating a phrase or sentence that you’ll remember, such as AllBlackCatsGoToHeaven. However, even this method isn’t the best I’ve found. It’s great if you only want to remember a few passwords, but if you have passwords for many different things as we do nowadays, how do you remember which password goes to what?
And this is why I use something called a Password Formula for my passwords. The goal is to make my passwords long, memorable, AND different from each other. Different because you want your bank account to stay safe even when someone might steal your Facebook password. Here’s how a password Formula works: Start with a base password that has a variable section(s) in it. For example, All[var]CatsGoToHeaven. Now, come up with a rule, based on the service you are making a password for, to fill in the variable section(s). For example, take the first two letters and the last two letters of the service name. So I would take Faok from Facebook and fill that in to make AllFaokCatsGoToHeaven. Yet, for Reddit it would be AllReitCatsGoToHeaven. Now all my passwords are long, memorable, and different from each other. This is the best way.
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