When choosing a password, choose one that you can remember but difficult for others to guess. A few helpful guidelines for choosing a secure password are listed below.
- It is recommended that you do not use information about yourself that others might know for your password such as:
- personal dates
- names of family members or pets
- dictionary words (a strong password should not contain words found in the dictionary)
- phone numbers
- Try to make your password a combination of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers, and special characters. Remember your password is caSe-sEnsiTive.
- Make your password at least eight characters in length. Twelve or sixteen characters are better.
- One way to construct an easy-to-remember, strong password is to take a word or phrase and replace some of the letters with numbers, special characters, and upper-case letters. For example, you could replace letters in the word "surfboard" so that it becomes "$urfB0ard".
