To create a Secure Password, it’s more secure to use a combination of numbers, symbols, lowercase and uppercase letters.

There are password generator programs that do just that.

Most stolen passwords are relatively simple and easy to crack. Things like names, birthdays, hobbies, and favourite pets aren’t good password material, and using them is just asking for trouble.

However, it’s also more secure to create a password that can be memorised and not written down or kept on your computer.

Many ways of doing this include using a word and a number you can remember, but combining them in a way that you can remember. Say the word is smith and the number is 1964.

Using those letters and numbers, the password could be s1m9i6t4h, or sm19i64th, or smi1964th, etc.

This is obscure enough so long as your name is not Smith, which hackers might start with if they knew.

You can use any character in a password, but not spaces. To make it even more secure use upper case and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. e.g. s[1M9i6T4}h.

But to make a password which is secure but easy for you to remember, use a word combination but replace some letters with symbols or numbers. E.g. # for H, 1 for i, ! for l, 3 for E, 9 for g. [ for L, etc. It will look like words to you, but it will be harder for hackers to imagine it.

When using a password that has been emailed to you for say FTP, you can save a lot of frustration by copying it from the email [Crtl C] and pasting it [Ctrl V] into your FTP program which then encrypts the password so that you only see • • • • • • • • .

Try to make your password 12 characters or more. Hackers use password guessing programs. Make it more difficult for them to guess yours.

Copy [Ctrl C] and paste [Ctrl V] passwords emailed to you to avoid frustrating typos or mixing up say 1’s and l’s, or O’s and 0’s. But careful you don’t copy a space,

Keep your life uncomplicated.