If ever there was a time to change your password
What with Apple's Developer Center being hacked and the Ubuntu forums compromised, it's a good time to review your passwords. We don't need to tell you to keep strong unique passwords for each service you use, but just in case you've been a little slack recently - here's a few resources for you:
Password Card
Password card is great - it's a credit card sized slip of paper you can print out with a series of unique random characters auto generated for you in a grid. Print the card out and use the grid to generate passwords - for each service you use, choose a colour and a symbol from the password card and read off the characters for your desired password length (added bonus points if you choose to read right to left).
Generate your own
If password card is too annoying (and you hate fishing in your wallet every time you need to log in somewhere), use a pre-generated base password that only you know, interspersed with some characters from each domain name for the service you are using - for example, if your base password is "Pa55word" and you visit gmail.com, then your algorithm might be something like first 3 letters of my base password, plus the last three letters from the domain name plus the rest of my base password, rendering "Pa5ail5word" as your password for gmail. Repeat for each site you visit for a unique password for each site - as long as nobody finds your your personal algorithm and base password, you're good to go.
Beef up your memory
If that isn't good enough for you, then the only thing to do is beef up your memory - something like the Memory Palace technique can be a real lifesaver. Also called the Method of Loci, the memory palace technique associates items to be remembered with physical places you know well combined with something ridiculous to help remember. So, using gmail as an example you might picture an envelope sitting on top of your kitchen counter top drinking a fine ale. You password can then be something like "kitchencounterdrinkingale" - substitute some numbers and special characters and you've generated a password that you probably won't forget.









