More and more websites and online services ask you to set up a user name and password before you can use them. This is done for two reasons:

1. To ensure other people cannot see information about you
2. So that the website knows who you are

The kinds of information that are now being protected by passwords are becoming ever more valuable as Internet Banking and other services are provided online. Choosing good passwords is now more important than ever.

The following hints are based on an article on the BBC's 'Ask Bruce' webpage. To see the full article see the link at the bottom of this page.

Making good passwords

It can seem difficult to think of a good password that is easy for you to remember but hard for a cracker or criminal to guess. There are some tricks you can use to make it a lot easier.

One way is to take a phrase you can remember but nobody else will know, like your first girlfriend’s address, and turn some of the letters into numbers and some into punctuation.

Examples

• The address '85 Constable Road' could become '85C0n5tab!eR0@d'. (You can use 'O' instead of 'o', '5' instead of 's', '!' instead of 'l' and '@' instead of 'a' etc).
• Or how about 'I like Fridays because I finish at 4pm' becomes > IlFbIfa4PM
• Or even ... 'Now I can make passwords really easily' > N1cmPWre

The full BBC article on choosing good passwords is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/askbruce/articles/security/passwordchoose_2.shtml