- Easy to remember: Passwords don't have to be hard to remember, just hard to crack. Typing a sentence with lots of words and including punctuation, this keeps the password safe for sufficiently long time but makes them easier to type and remember.
- Changing it up: Our passwords which are more often based on the sensitivity of the content those accounts protect need to be changed regularly. Accounts protecting financial information, for example, should have strong passwords that are changed often and are never reused.
- Misspellings are fine: I would suggest avoiding password phrases like "To be, or not to be" that appear elsewhere. Deliberately misspelling words can make passwords harder to crack too. But make sure you remember them.
- Avoid Personal stuff: It's best to stay away from using words and numbers that are dear to you--pets, significant others, your mother's maiden name, etc. That kind of information can be easy to find at sites like social networks. Avoid it as much as possible.
- Scrambling: If you need to write a password on a piece of paper, scramble the letters. Even something as simple as swapping or adding digits can help prevent misuse. Scrambling the letters makes it tougher for hackers to hack.
- Avoid Repetition: You shouldn't have the same password for different websites. If one account is compromised you can't afford to give the attacker a foothold into the rest of your accounts. Make sure all your accounts have different passwords.
- Use Password managers: KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known. Download
- Add numbers: You should consider adding a number to the end of sentence-based password phrases for extra uniqueness.
- Avoid Public Wi-Fi: It's better if you avoid usage of public Wi-fi and typing passwords into other people's machines in case a keylogger is installed.
- Https: Make sure that you only log in on pages protected with SSL encryption. Look for the "s" in "https://" and you can decrease the likelihood that someone could sniff your password on an open network or public wi-fi access point.