It's really easy to make sure your password complies.
Your passwords must contain at least 4 of the following 5 elements:
- numeric (0-9)
- uppercase (A-Z)
- lowercase (a-z)
- special characters (?,!, @, #, %, etc…)
- spaces
If your password contains anything that is a recognisable word or name, in any language, it will be a weak password. If your password contains letters or number sequences, family names, fantasy characters or anything that is in common use of the internet, it is a weak password.
If you have a weak password, change it now.
Creating passwords using passphrases
Using passphrases is a good way of constructing strong passwords and helps with remembering them:
- step 1: choose a phrase – for example: 'I walk my 12 German Shepherd dogs in the park at 6 every morning'
- step 2: use the first character of each word: Iwm12GSditpa6em
- step 3: incorporate special characters (such as ! # @ $ % ^ & * ( ) _ +=\ : "<>?) and numbers to increase complexity.
Using this method, the final password would be !Iwm12GSditpa6em – this is just an example, please don't use this password.
The more letters, special characters and numbers used and the longer the password is, the stronger it will be.