How to remember 100 passwords

August 17th, 2007 Noor Posted in Life Hacks |

Remembering a unique password for the dozens of logins you have may sound impossible, but it’s not. You don’t need to remember 100 passwords if you have one rule set for generating them.

Here’s how it works: create unique passwords by choosing a base password and then applying a rule that mashes in some form of the service name with it. For example, you could use your base password with the first two consonants and the first two vowels of the service name. If your base password were asdf (see how easy that is to type?), for example, then your password for Yahoo! would be ASDFYHAO, and your password for eBay would be ASDFBYEA.
Something simpler — but along the same lines — might involve the same letters to start (say, your initials and a favorite number) plus the first three letters of a service name. In that case, my password for Amazon would be GMLT10AMA. (Include obscure middle
initials — like your mother’s maiden name or a childhood nickname — that not many people know about for extra security.)

Before you decide on your single password generation rule, keep in
mind that while password requirements differ for each service in terms of length and characters allowed and required, a good guideline is a password at least eight characters long that includes both letters and numbers. To make a password even more secure or applicable for services that require special characters add them around or inside it, like #GMLT10LIF# or GMLT10#LIF.

One problem with rules-based passwords is that some sites have their own rules that conflict with your own, such as no special characters. In those cases, you have to document or remember the exception to your rule for those services.