How to make a good all-around password

[Andre Kesteloot]

From: How to build better passwords without losing your mind
http://cwonline.computerworld.com/t/7324879/875421059/510486/0/

One Password to Rule Them All

It's fairly easy to create strong, unique passwords by following a few 
simple rules. First, we need a password "base" with a mix of uppercase 
and lowercase letters, numbers, and even a symbol or two to spice things 
up. Pick a phrase that will be easy to remember, and feel free to be as 
creative as you like. For simplicity's sake I'm going to use one of my 
favorite dishes, chicken adobo, as our example.

Make sure your passphrase is at least eight characters and avoid 
obviously memorable topics like proper names, birthdays, and hometowns. 
You should also avoid picking a single word and changing some of its 
characters to symbols -- hacker tools are sophisticated enough to 
overcome that trick. Go for a passphrase -- multiple words strung 
together -- rather than a password; this makes it harder for hackers 
working to crack your password by trying every word in the dictionary.

Now that we've picked a passphrase, we need to mash that phrase into a 
single string (chickenadobo), and then sprinkle in a few capital letters 
that are simple to remember (ChickenAdobo). Next, let's pepper our 
password base with a few random characters to keep things interesting 
(Ch!cken at dob0).

Now that we have our base password, we're going to memorize and use it 
as a skeleton key that will unlock our account on any Website as long as 
we hold fast to a few simple rules. To create the strongest password 
possible, we're going to invent a simple naming pattern as a mnemonic 
device that will help us generate a unique password for every Website we 
visit.

For example, let's say I decided to always use the first and fourth 
letter of a Website's domain name in the middle of my passphrase, 
capitalizing the former while leaving the latter lower-case. That means 
my Facebook.com account would have the unique password Ch!ckenFe at dob0, 
while my about.me account would require the password Ch!ckenAu at dob0.

See the pattern? Make up something similar and you'll have a unique 
alphanumeric password for every website you visit, one that's easy to 
remember but nearly impossible for hackers to figure out. No password is 
perfect, but knowing your own unique passphrase and a few mnemonic 
tricks will go a long way toward keeping your online privacy intact.

/Reprinted with permission from *PCWorld.com* <http://www.pcworld.com>. 
Story copyright 2011 PC World Communications. All rights reserved./
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