I had a conversation with my mom the other day about how she has a hard time remembering all the different passwords she has for different websites. She has a particularly hard time dealing with the special characters and requirements of different websites. I expressed my sympathies with her and offered her the only password she’d need to know for the rest of her life which would be easy to remember and fulfill all modern requirements of passwords. I told her to use “Ilovemyson11”. She should remember the “Ilovemyson” part and as long as she knows that ‘I’ is always capitalized, she will spell it right. She needs to remember the ‘11’ because it is the month I was born. In that password fulfills three common requirements of passwords; characters a-z, numbers, and capital letters. Simple, isn’t it?

How can this help you? When creating a password which is easy to remember, make it a whole phrase like “Ilovemyson” or “techtipsmakemyweek”. Start the password with a capital letter so you remember which letter needs to be capitalized. Then add numbers or special characters (@#$%) that have special meaning to you (I recommend numbers so you can increment them every time you need to change your password).

A solid password, fulfilling the requirements set forth by the US Government, could be something like “Techtipsmakemyworldgoround52”. A capitalized ‘T’ in “tech” plus an easy to remember phrase plus “52” which is the number of weeks a year I get to read tech tips.