This way I only have to remember a single formula rather than a whole bunch of different passwords.

Never use short, simple passwords

If you’re still using passwords such as ‘iloveyou’ or ‘hello’ then expect to be hacked. Never choose a password that is that simple. There are kids out there using simple hacking scripts that rely on long lists of combinations of commonly used words to guess passwords.

Even if you choose a complex password don’t use the same one every time you register. A hacker may get your login details from an obscure forum you may have registered at and then accessed your Hotmail account using those details.

Think of a formula to determine and remember all your passwords

First thing is to figure out what values will make up your formula. These should include anything you can easily remember and also values you can determine from the site you are registering at.

1. Your username
2. Your email address
3. Personal info such as your birthday, place of birth or any important dates or names of people you know
4. The URL of the site you are registering at
5. The name of the site you are registering at

I’ll explain what to do next by example.

Lets say I want to register a Yahoo! email account at http://mail.yahoo.com, using lawrence71aus as my username. I will use the information from 1, 3 and 4 above.

A formula to determine the password could be made up of the following values:

• The number of characters of the URL (mail.yahoo.com): 13
• The first 2 letters of the domain name (yahoo.com): ya
• The first letter of the place where I was born (Rome): R
• The last 2 characters of my username (lawrence71aus): us
• The last 2 numbers of the year I got married: 07
• My wife’s first name: Zoe

And put together like this… ya + Zoe + 07 + us + R + 13 … to produce the following password: yaZoe07usR13

I can then apply the same formula if I register for a Live mail account using my new Yahoo! email address lawrence71aus@yahoo.com as the username.

• The number of characters of the URL (mail.live.com): 11
• The first 2 letters of the domain name (live.com): li
• The first letter of the place where I was born: R
• The last 2 characters of my username, not counting what comes after the ‘@’ symbol (lawrence71aus@yahoo.com): us
• The last 2 numbers of the year I got married: 07
• My wife’s first name: Zoe

Applying the same formula results in: liZoe07usR11

The formula can be as complex was you want, but some websites impose limits on the number of characters you can use. More often than not they require a minimum number of characters.

I hope this is helpful. And I glad that the stuff I learnt in my high school maths classes have finally put to practice.

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