Everybody has heard it all before. Never use the same password across multiple sites. Give your passwords numbers, letters, symbols, and all kinds of other tricks that make them hard to break.
The problem, is this day and age everybody has close to a dozen passwords or more, especially when using software with multiple layers of security such as medical or dental practice management software! Such complexity is a recipe for forgetting your passwords, and the worst thing you can do is write them all down in some centralized location for somebody to find them – or worse yet, in a file saved on some folder in an email account. Here are some tips to make memorable, unique passwords for each site or service you use.
Consider a password blueprint
What do I mean by password blueprint? Take a word or a phrase, alter it, and let that be the part that you use in each password. Sounds easy, right? Let’s consider your password blueprint design:
You can’t get away from it – you will need letters, numbers, uppercase, lowercase, and symbols – and will be 8 characters long. Some sites will demand these provisions, and some won’t. If you want your password blueprint to succeed, then you have to include all of them in your password blueprint.
Choose a word or phrase as a base
Okay, so now, just think of a word or a phrase that you will remember. Consider a word that has 6 letters at least, something simple that you would just love all your passwords to be. Or, if you would rather think of a phrase, make it at least a 6 word phrase and take the first letter of each word to create your 6-letter word.
Alter your word
Now, let’s create your password blueprint.
Step 1 – Write down your word in lowercase.
Step 2 – Put a capital letter in there. Maybe make it, say, the last letter of the word.
Step 3 – Put a number in front of it. Maybe begin it with a 3.
Step 4 – Throw a symbol before and after the word, like #
You have a basic blueprint now
You now have a viable blueprint for your password. If you used the word “ankles”, then maybe following these steps got you “#3ankleS#”.
Now, apply it to multiple locations
With your blueprint in hand, the rest is easy. Take an identifier from each site and add it to your template. Amazon? Gmail? Yahoo? Add the first and last letter of the site to the beginning of your template.
What just happened?
You’ve just created memorable, unique passwords which meet complexity requirements for every site you visit. Here’s the example. Let’s say we used the word “ankles”. Here’s the rundown:
Gmail – gl#3ankleS#
Yahoo – yo#3ankleS#
Amazon – an#3ankleS#
Just keep your own, unique formula secret, and no one is going to break those passwords! For other tips, visit and subscribe to our tech blog!