When it comes to internet security, good passwords and “easy to remember” have always been at odds. As soon as you need to write down your password on a cheat sheet, it’s not really a good password (anymore).

So, how can you create unique passwords for the different websites, easy to remember and still secure enough so that standard dictionary attacks can’t break them ?

Tada, enter your individual “smart password generator” !

I developed a system of generating unique passwords tied to the domain name of the website. Here is the basic principle, it can be done in lots of variations.

Take a domain like www.randomsite.com

The password rule could be:

1st letter domain name, uppercase -> (”R”)
2nd last letter TLD (Top Level Domain, “com”) -> (”o”)
3rd last letter domain -> (”i”)
1st letter uppercase TLD -> (”C”)
1st favorite special character -> (”.”)
Number of letters in domain name -> (”10″)
2nd favorite special character -> (”-”)

Password: RoiC.10-

Or, example domain: www.anotherpage.org -> password: AraO.11-

Advantages:

I found that some banking websites don’t allow special characters, so I created a 2nd rule set w/o special characters, but more numbers. You could just add your year of birth or something like that to the password to make it longer (= safer).

E.g. www.bankofamerica.com

1st letter domain name, uppercase -> (”R”)
2nd last letter TLD (Top Level Domain, “com”) -> (”o”)
3rd last letter domain -> (”i”)
1st letter uppercase TLD -> (”C”)
Number of letters in domain name -> (”13″)
Year of birth: (”1788″)

Password: BoiC131788

I know some of you will object and say “Yeah, but a computer can easily figure out your rule“.

Yes, that’s true. But it would need a couple of your passwords first. And don’t you think your internet identity could be in trouble already if “some computer” knew your standard password, the one you have been using on all kinds of websites for the last 10 years. ?

Oh wait, dozens of computers already know. And you probably didn’t even bother to chose unique usernames.

You better get started changing your password strategy right now ! :-)