Play the Password Game: You Win!

By | April 12, 2014
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Let’s Play the Password Game

With all the brouhaha over the Heartbleed Bug and other known and unknown threats, the only thing you can do is make sure you’re using nothing but strong passwords — and change them frequently. Yes, it’s a hassle, but not nearly as big of a hassle as having your bank account cleaned out or your identity stolen.

And don’t even think about paying good money to use something like LifeLock to protect you. If you think of the billions of dollars they rake in, they have very little to lose by guaranteeing you they’ll pay you a million dollars if someone steals your identity. That’s like us telling you that if you create passwords by using the information in this article and your accounts are compromised, we’ll send you two cents. Even though we don’t have much money, we would never go broke making this guarantee. So don’t waste your money by using a service like LifeLock. Besides, Lifelock has been sued and lost many times for false advertising.

Play it safe. Create strong passwords, change them frequently, don’t fall for Internet and telephone scams, and always be wary when dealing with sites you don’t know.

We’ve beaten you over the head so many times trying to get you all to use a password manager (and we recommend LastPass, Bitwarden, or Roboform – they all have free versions and all have password generators that make creating and remembering strong passwords as easy as clicking a mouse.

Alas, no matter how many times we tell you to use a good password manager, you don’t and you probably won’t. So for those of you who want to make strong passwords but still want to remember them, here’s something to try.

Let’s play the password game. OK, your dog’s name is Mookie and she’s 8 years old. You could make a password like lLuvMyM00K!3+8 Just use zeros for the letter o’s an exclamation point for the letter i in the name Mookie and the number 8. It’s a strong password; according to Bitwarden’s password strength checker, it would take a hacker equipped with the fastest password-cracking software in the world (software that can guess billions of passwords in less than a second) 2 years to crack it.

You can take any word with an S, I, E, or O, and change letters to numbers or change the case to make a pass4word you can easily remember. You can use your imagination too.

$U$AN$.r3d.C0RV3TT3! is Susan’s red Corvette. It would take a hacker 28 years for a hacker to crack that.

A password like l.@M.in.Miss0uri-48 — (l AM lN Missouri 48 – Your state and your age.) I hacker would be working on that for centuries before that password would crack.

B0$T0N.$@IIY.42 (Boston Sally 42 your city, name, and age). I would take a hacker 7 years to crack that once. Not centuries, but still who spends 7 years working on cracking a password for an individual?

3y3.@m.Ml$T3R*JAM3$ (I am Mister James). It would take a hacker centuries to crack that password.

Well, you get the idea. Remember, never use the same password for every site. You can easily remember your passwords by making a list of “hints”(not your full passwords) like My State, My Car, My City, Name, and so on. Anyone having access to that list would have no idea what your passwords were, but you.

You can play the password game with lots of words and combinations of words, symbols, and numbers that are familiar to you, yet when changed use the password game and make strong passwords that you can actually remember.

Still, we’re going to put in another plug for password managers. Passwords, strong passwords, are the only thing standing between you and criminals and hackers. Password managers like LastPass, Bitwarden, and RoboForm, can generate and remember extremely long passwords in less than a second, they can remember them for you, and automatically fill in logins for you on-site that require you to log in.

 

8 thoughts on “Play the Password Game: You Win!

  1. Linda

    I love my Last Pass! I’ve been using it since you recommended it. I also love using the generator. I have learned you don’t have to have a password you can pronounce or remember. How great is that

    Reply
  2. Len

    I have tried a number of password managers but not found any that work as well for me as Lastpass !!

    Reply
  3. Della

    I have been using RoboForm for a few years now. I could not live without it.

    Reply
  4. Janice M

    Love my Last Pass and have used it since you recommended it. Also Love your computer Direct Care–thanks again, Darcy! Everything is just fine…still waiting on MS for install fix–maybe in the next century they get to it?? 🙂

    Reply
  5. EUGENE ERWIN

    I have been using RoboForm for quite a few years now. Is this still okay?

    Reply
  6. Debb

    I was “once” a die hard RoboForm user until they cheated their lifetime users of free updates. I hate companies who backslid on their word!!! I have used Last Pass ever since and I have come to love it. I use the free version. May upgrade it tho so I can use it on my android as well. Hate that it isn’t free as well but anyway … saving the possibility of being hacked or having your identity stolen is so so so worth the extra bit of hassle!! Remember …. never say never ; )

    Reply
  7. Artie

    I did use Roboform but their free version only lets you have I think its 10 sites so I switched to LastPass. It gives unlimited sites for free and I have a bunch of passwords. I got both from Cloudeight’s freebee offers. So thank you Cloudeight and thank you LastPass.

    Reply
  8. Carolyn

    Well, of all the above folks I must be the dumbest twit around….can’t make the program work for any of my sites. Not one single time did any pop-up occur asking me if I wanted LastPass to remember the login info. Not once! I installed the LastPass and then it told me the program was outdated and I needed a more current version. Did that. When it was extended to Google Chrome, I logged in and proceeded to go on with my usual email sites, etc. No pop-up. Tried adding the sites with the info manually. Still didn’t work. I just uninstalled it. Not worth the stress of trying to make it work. Think I’ll take my dumb butt and use the other info you’ve posted that does work for me.

    Reply

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