As I have written repeatedly before, passwords are here to stay, and probably for a very long time. Since we’ve essentially got no choice but to keep on using them, here is a short and creative guide to making long and strong passwords – with samples! (No, I do not use any of these.)
Take inspiration from the entertainment industry
Have you ever played the Japanese video game, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance?
ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ: Nope!
Neither have I. But, you know how we’re told to never use dictionary words as our passwords? Well, “Revengeance” sure isn’t a dictionary word.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
That’s a little long, so let’s shorten it.
MGR:Revengeance
However, such a password is lacking a number in it. Since a lot of people who played the game are waiting for its sequel, Metal Gear Rising 2, I thought:
MGR2:Re-revengeance
ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ: That sounds like an awesome video game.
And it’s definitely an awesome password. It’s 19 characters long, has uppercase and lowercase letters, has a number in it, and has not one but two special characters. And best of all: it’s memorable! If I weren’t sharing this password with the whole world, I would have used it myself!
Let’s try something from the film industry this time. Since the Japanese seem to have a penchant for long, edgy names, I decided to check out IMDb’s list of the top 100 Japanese movies of all time, scroll through, and stop at the first edgy name I see. And I discovered Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
That’s pretty long, and also doesn’t have a number in it, so let’s tweak it a bit. Since it was in the #40 spot according to IMDb as of this writing, let’s use the number 40 somewhere.
40.NeonGenesisEvangelion
24 characters, got uppercase, lowercase, numbers, a special character, and it’s not that hard to remember or type out. Pretty good.
How about one more from the entertainment industry, from the music industry this time? And what better song to use as inspiration than the most popular song of all time!
ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ: Did I just get rickrolled?
Fun facts: According to Know Your Meme, this song from 1987 was first used to troll people on 4chan in 2007. So, we’ve got a few ideas for passwords here already.
RickAstley's1987Hit Rick-Rolling2007 Rick-Rollingon4chan
Take inspiration from blind curiosity
But wait. Why is it called “rickrolling“? There’s nothing there about rolling. Well, turns out that’s because rickrolling was the evolution of duckrolling, which itself was inspired by a prank of a 4chan word filter turning all instances of “egg” into “duck”. So, “eggroll” would turn into “duckroll”.
Hey, I just got another great password idea.
Eggroll=>Duckrollon4chan
ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ: Hey, I got a question: do ducks breathe underwater?
No idea. Let’s find out. I searched just that question on Google DuckDuckGo, and this was the first result. You, uh, might not want to click on that and read it.
ʕ • ᴥ • ʔ: Oh, man. I did, and I’ll never look at ducks the same way ever again.
Yeah, uh, this is a pretty gruesome password I thought up.
TILDucks=RapeTilDrownedCorpse
Too long, and there’s no number, so let’s put today’s date on it and avoid capitalizing whole dictionary words.
16ducks=Rapetildrown
Okay, let’s make one more password, hopefully one that isn’t so horrifying.
ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ: Hng. After that last one, I can’t think of anything, or maybe I don’t want to think of anything. Please just give me something meaningless to think about.
Okay, uh, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet! The perfect dummy text! I wonder where it came from.
According to Wikipedia, it comes from “sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of Cicero’s ‘De finibus bonorum et malorum‘.” Well, we can make a few good passwords out of that information.
LoremIpsumfrom32,33 Cicero's32-33Dummytext Cicero[32-33]=>LoremIpsum
And this is how I make up strong, unique, memorable passwords.