Over the weekend my mom gave me access to hootsuite (her social media management account) so I could help maintain her social media posts. Her password seemed like a random pick of numbers, letters, and special characters. When she told me every account has it’s personal password I asked her how she remembers them all. It comes down to personalizing your passwords with easy to remember “code.” The last thing you need is the stress of someone getting into one or more of your accounts. Here’s how you can make each of your passwords unique:

1. Create a 10 – 12 character master password

Think of a rhyme, song lyric or phrase that you enjoy. Let’s take a line from the song Sitting on the dock of the bay by Ottis Redding.

“I Left my home in Georgia headed for the Frisco bay.”

Take the first letter of each word to create your password: ILmhiGhftFb. Keep the mixture of upper and lower case letters as well as punctuation. The i’s become 1’s and maybe add a number at the end. Avoid using birthdays, ages, addresses, and telephone numbers since hackers can find that info easily on social media and Google. Use a number that is important enough to remember. Let’s say the age you were when you got your first car.

Your password is now 1Lmh1GhftFb21. Add an exclamation mark for even more security. This combination looks random to everyone else but really means something to you. Memorize your new master password.

2. Use letters from the online account to personalize your master password

Your Google account password would be 1Lmh1GhftFb21!GoO if you took the first 3 letters of the name Google, made the middle one lower case and stuck it to your master password. Your Kijiji account would be 1Lmh1GhftFb21!KiJ. You can use any combination or abbreviation as long as you can associate it with the account. Place it anywhere in the password that makes sense to you.

In less than 10 minutes you can create a strong and secure password that would be near to impossible to guess. The time you invest now to change all your passwords will save you time and frustration in the future if you were to be a victim of hacking.

Click here to subscribe to The Atalanta Woman Magazine.