Having trouble remembering the different passwords you use for your online accounts? Use this simple technique to create as many complex combinations as you want and memorize them effortlessly!
Mail, social networks, administrations, banks, streaming platforms, merchants, application stores, professional tools… All the online services you use on a daily basis are linked to accounts. Accounts to which you connect using two “sesames”: an identifier – most often, an email address, a telephone number or a pseudonym –, called login in English, and, above all, a password – password in English. It is the combination of these two elements that allows you to be uniquely identified to use an account.
The problem is that while it is very easy to remember an email address or a phone number used as an identifier, it is more difficult to remember passwords. Indeed, for obvious security reasons, it is strongly recommended, on the one hand, to use different passwords for the sites and services that we use, and on the other, to train them to using complex combinations of numbers, symbols and upper and lower case letters. And unless you have the mind of a cryptographer, remembering these convoluted sequences of characters is essential to your security.
To work around the problem, you can use a password manager or save everything in your Internet browser. but these tools are not foolproof and you don’t know exactly where this sensitive data is stored, which can be annoying the day you need to access it to view or modify it.
However, there is a simple method to easily create unique passwords that are both complex – therefore “strong” – and easy to remember. It consists of forming them in two parts with, on one side, a series of characters serving as an immutable “root”, and common to all accounts and, on the other, a “code” specific to each site or service. By combining these two sections, one fixed and one easy to find variable with between 12 and 16 characters in total, you can form as many different and complex passwords that you will have no trouble finding.
Let’s take an example. Start with an easy-to-remember sequence, combining numbers and upper and lower case letters, such as Word2Pass Or MONs3s4me and add one or two special characters to get your personal root: ?Word2Password Or &MONs3s4me$. You then just need to complete it with a sequence specific to each service to have a unique password. If you have an account on Comment ça Marche, simply add CCM at the beginning or end, which will make CCM?Word2Pass Or &MONs3s4me$CCM. And for a Gmail account, Gmail?Word2Password Or &MONs3s4me$Gmail. Same for an Amazon account, with Amaz?Word2Pass Or &MONs3s4me$AMAZFor example.
Of course, these are deliberately simple examples: it’s up to you to personalize this principle to obtain your magic formula which will give you long and complex combinations. You will thus have a “recipe” to create as many unique passwords as you want: you will just have to remember your root and the algorithm to complete it in order to instantly find the password associated with a particular account.
Of course, this method does not constitute an absolute guarantee. A hacker or an indiscreet relative who discovered two of your passwords would quickly understand how they are formed. And he would use your recipe to guess everyone else. But this risk is very low. And nothing prevents you from using two different roots with the same recipe to form two categories of passwords – one for social networks, the other for administrations, for example –, just to confuse the issue in case piracy. You will see: your brain is your best safe, especially if you exercise it regularly!