Ten years ago, things were straight-forward online - you often had just a single password to store for your email address. These days however, it’s not remarkable to have 10 or 20 passwords for a myriad of web services that you’re a customer of. And you can predict what happens : Lots of individuals tend to use the same password again and again. Some individuals may not think their Bebo member account as being hugely vital, but it is if you’re using the very same password for that as you are for your PayPal account. Of course, the ease of having to remember just a single password is persuasive, but what if an individual gets their mitts on that one password? That’s right, they potentially have their mitts on all of the servives you’ve signed up to that share that very same password. If you are tempted to think they can’t know the other services you’ve signed up to, it isn’t essential. They launch programs which examine thousands of online services against your username/password pair that they already have.
It’s an issue, but it’s easily remedied. In actual fact, it’s not essential to store each and every account name/password. Why? Your browser can remember this data. Be it your Twitter acount or Email password. Just ask your browser to remember each account name/password, and then setup a central password (”master password”) just in case an individual else gets physical access to your computer. If they do so, they will have to type in the master password in order to login to any of your services. Or to put it another way, you can sign up to countless online services, and only have to actually remember one password : your master password for your web browser.
Regarding passwords themselves, make them long and random, such as 8JJJfrfrt65K which is an assortment of lower and upper case characters and numbers. As you don’t need to remember them, be as obscure as you wish. Whatever you do, don’t use dictionary words as a password, as these are simple to identify for 3rd parties.