We've had a few cases of possable password hackers, so just to be on the on the safe side, I'm HIGHLY suggesting everyone change their passwords.

I would add that using common, easily guessed, short single words is pretty much guaranteed to lead to your password being compromised sooner or later.

Name fred123
Password fred456

Yeah it takes real brains to crack that one!

Leet speak is similarly easy and well known

Name fred
Pass fr3d

A child could probably break that inside ten minutes.

Name fred
Password wilma

Do me a favor!


Single word passwords are always going to get compromised by brute force attack scripts. Use a phrase that only means something to you but that you can remember easily. Or use a random collection of lower and upper case letters and numbers. Most places now also recognise extended characters like % too.

Name fred
Password Excal1bUr

a step up

Name fred
Password excAlibur woz $ton3d

much harder to break but not real hard to remember

Name fred
Password yO[PuA;,Z[MRf\!~

even better. Just make sure you write it down in a safe place.

Use a free password generator such as http://www.snapfiles.com/screenshots/fbpwgen.htm. Then store all your passwords (you DO use a different one for every site?) in an encypted database protected by a long but easily remembered pass phrase. My own main pass phrase is over 40 characters in length but I can type it in easily and no, it isn't a list of my cats names! Inside that database I have over 200 individual passwords similar to the one above.

The frequency of bad passwords was illustrated recently with The Top 50 Gawker Media Passwords.

a trick i learned... take your password, and shift your fingers to the right one or two keys

ie.
Pass: password
Shifted pass: [sddeptf

Pass: blasted
Shifted pass: n;sdyrf

Here's something I often do: Come up with a sentence that's easy to remember, but unlikely to ever actually be uttered, then use the frist letter of each word in the sentence as the password, and capitalize one of them at random

Example: The came sleeps at noon, but not in Cleveland.
Password: tcsAnbnic

add numbers and special characters at your discretion.