I’ve been an internet user for a long time, I started using it WAY back in 1996, (Hell I had a 6 digit ICQ number) back then the need for security was minimal, passwords were still a requirement but back then, security was so minimal your password could have been ‘password’ and it was unlikely to get broken into.

These days of course we need the added security, the internet has changed a great deal and instead of it being populated by pale, nerdy types (like me), it is now populated by a large percentage of the world, including more than a few undesirables. For this reason it is now vital that your passwords are kept secure and protected.

Everyone knows these days that your password should ideally contain a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters and at least one number. The best passwords are 8-10 characters long and have no discernable meaning.

eg: XJV549bbY

Passwords such as these are hard enough to remember once, let alone if you have to have a different one for every site you sign up to, and what happens when you are forced to change your password for security reasons. At times like this it is a good idea to have a system, to help you have a different password for every site but be able to remember them all.

The way I do it is I have a 'seed' password for each site which stays the same for each site. I then have another part which which changes depending on the site you visit.

Lets say for example that your password is BYz454G340xH. This is a pretty secure password as it contains all the required ingredients; a combination of mixed-case letters and numbers with no discernable meaning.

Obviously if you used this password on all of your sites it would loose a lot of its security, but if we took the first 6 letters and the last 2 letters as fixed and replaced the remaining ones for each individual site, it would be very secure.

In order to make it memorable you should develop a 'key' which you can use to easily remember what the replacement letters should be; for example if you set up a password for Google at 3:40pm your replacement digits could be G340. If you set up a Digital Fusion account at 8:20pm your replacement digits could be DF820.

Personally I would suggest you come up with your own system, for that extra security. Of course using the date/time is a great idea as it would be impossible for a potential cracker to guess when you created the password.

Obviously you still have a bit of remembering to do but memorising 3 or 4 characters with some personal meaning is better than trying to remember a longer random string. If you absolutely have to write it down then just write the replacement, not the whole password.

If you use a lot of web services then it might be useful to group similar sites together with the same password number, or even better, use Facebook connect, Google connect or openID whenever possible.