h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Depending on the minimum/maximum length of the required password, a passphrase might be the thing to go for. You take a certain phrase, a famous quotation, a line from one of your favourite song lyrics, ....
and use it as a passphrase. You might, of course, have some additional password security by changing the common phrase at some points. As an example: The famous Blues Brothers quote "We're on a mission from God!" would be an excellent passphrase, as it's easy to remember, has some upper-/lowercase letters and some special characters (very good!). But: it's widely known, and someone who knows that you are a Blues Brothers fan might give it a shot. So change it to "We're off a mission from God?" or something similar.

Another way of finding meaningless passwords which are easy to remember is to use only the first letters of each word, including upper-/lowercase writing an special characters. The upper phrase would lead to the following result: "W'oamfg!" which is rather meaningless to anybody else.

Another good example are song lyrics, let's say Frank Sinatra's song "Love and Marriage" (the "Married with Children" - tune). The first word are: "Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse an carriage. ...". The resulting passphrase would be "L&m, l&m, ctlah&c."

I think you get the point.

And always remember:
Your password is the key to your informational identity. Anyone knowing your password can do things YOU will be blamed for.

Noone has the right to know your password, there is absolutely no reason to ask for it. Anyone who does is not trustworthy.

take care

jfsjbb

What I find is that over a period of time, I DO forget passwords -- even the most memorable one at the time that it was used. I'm sure I'd find it really tough to keep track of regular password changes, like at work ... whoa!

I think if I had to do something like that, I'd use a number series. The values of pi are wonderful for generating random number lists -- one can pick 'em off the array in whatever order one wishes. Even with the list in full view you and only you can know in which order the numbers are being picked out of the array. So maybe a combination of the earlier suggestions, using family names but with one continuously changing number, would be good?

I agree, security and privacy are truly precious. For saint and villain alike.