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How hard can it be to choose a good password?


(Image from xkcd.com)

It's actually not that hard...

Three or four random words with a numeral or special character inserted between each word makes quite a good password (will defeat every lowercase brute force attack). Even just capitalising the Nth letter of each of your words gives a dramatic improvement in security. So “coRrecthoRsebaTterystAple” for “correct horse battery staple”.
 
Longer is always better, but the following are also good tips:
All that aside, the MOST important thing is, if you reuse passwords, reuse them wisely:


§ leetspeak is the use of common substitutions of numbers or symbols for letters (see the cartoon above). For example, “0” (zero) for “o” (oh) or “!” for “i” or “3” for “e”. Definitely avoid these because password cracking programs usually check these permutations.


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