Last month we provided some important guidelines to use when creating passwords for accessing your various web site and applications. This month we want to show some examples of how you apply those guidelines. Recall from last month that we have a fixed phrase “I like Dogs” which translates to a password component of “!l&Ds”, a proposed prefix character of “~” and postfix character “^”, and a three easy to remember translation rules for the first and last letters of the site name – the same ones we applied to our fixed phrase.
1) “e” to “&”
2) “i” to “!”
3) “g” to “9”
Then finally, one additional aspect to using passwords on more secure sites is that they will likely remember the last 5 or 6 password you have used and not allow you to use those again, so start with “1” and bump up the number as required until you reach “9” then rotate back to “1” and place this number between the variable and fixed part of your password or at some other point in the password translation. Here are some examples:
For example google.com becomes 9& (“g” the first letter in google becomes “9” and “e” the last letter in google becomes “&”), appended with the password rotator (1 to start with) and the fixed easy to remember phrase “I like Dogs” already translated (see above) becomes ~9&1!l&Ds^. Remember that you always consistently add a tilde on the front and a high hat at the end.
For itunes.com, using this translation on the name (“i” to “!” and “s” to “s”) your password would initially be ~!s1!l&Ds^, the next password after you are asked to change it would be ~1s2!l&Ds^ and so on and so forth. If you instead use the subject of the site vs. the name say music (music, m to m, c to c) then it would be ~mc1!l&Ds^
The password for site yahoo.com would be ~Yo1!l&Ds^ if you use the phrase “I like Dogs”. Yahoo password with a different fixed phrase “My car is fast” would be ~Yo1Mycr!sft^, with the phrase “Yellow Roses”, ~Yo1YwRs^
Your Quickbooks application password with a fixed phrase of “Photography Rules” would be ~Qs1PyRs^
Clearly, since others are reading this blog you will need to adopt your own personal easy to remember fixed phrase and perhaps some translation rules other then the three show above. However, the general approach above should allow you to easily derive a password for any site or application name.
