How to Keep Track of All Those Passwords!

I was catching up on my newsfeeds and found my friend Liza's post about passwords. She doesn't use the same password on all her accounts but rather maintains a small pool of them. This isn't bad but it can still take a few tries to remember which one she used for a particular user account.

A few years ago I came up with a solution that's been working well for me. Using this "password algorithm" makes it easy to recall the password for a particular website even if all my passwords are different. Coming up with new passwords for new accounts is easy, too!

It's super geeky, but here's what I do: I use a password generating algorithm. Basically, I take some indication of time and the name of website and create a password based on that. If I change my password every three months, my indication of time could be the year and season.

To give you an example, the password I use for Facebook in the spring of 2007 would be generated like this:

2007 --> the year of the pig --> take the first two letters --> 'pi'
spring --> take the first two letters --> 'sp'
Facebook --> take the first two letters --> 'fa'

'pi' + 'sp' + 'fa' = 'pispfa'

Now you have a 'word' that depends on both the timeframe in which you change your passwords and the website of the user account. Since some websites will require passwords with 8 characters or more, as well as some capitalized letters and/or numbers, it's a good idea to prepend this 'word' with something that covers all those conditions. Then you can use this same prefix for all your passwords.

'3D' + 'pispfa' = 'T3pispfa'

It doesn't take too long to get used to the algorithm and with this one, you'll get to know the animals of the Chinese astrology. That way, you'll never have to try multiple passwords to get into your user account.

I've been using this for a few years and here are some things to keep in mind:

• You'll be using this algorithm a lot. It's best to keep it simple. In fact, the one above is probably overkill
• Put the characters that change least frequently at the beginning. Typing this will become automatic. That way, you can figure out the first two letters of the name of the website while you're typing your username and the first part of your password.
• Never hesitate at a login page again!