How to create a strong password

Most password advice focuses on the wrong thing: complexity. What actually makes a password unbreakable is its length. A password like "P@r0l4!" looks complex to the human eye, but it is eight characters long and uses well-known substitution patterns — which is exactly what attack software tries.

Four ordinary words such as "blue door eight olive", on the other hand, are easy to remember yet practically impossible to crack by trial and error. Length always wins.

The real danger: using the same password everywhere

No matter how strong your password is, the most common way accounts are taken over is this: a site's database leaks, and the e-mail and password pairs in it are tried on other sites. Every place where you used the same password falls at the same moment. That is why the rule "a separate password for every account" matters more than how complex the password is.

Password managers

There is no way to keep separate passwords in your head — and there shouldn't be. That is what a password manager is for: you remember a single master password and it holds the rest. Even the one built into your browser is better than nothing.

1. Put length first Aim for at least 12 characters, preferably 16. Writing four ordinary words side by side is far stronger than an eight-character complex string.
2. Don't use personal details Your year of birth, your child's name, your team's name, your phone number — these are at the top of the guessing lists. Don't put anything that can be learned from your social media into a password.
3. A separate password for every account This is the most important step. If you use the same password in two places, those two accounts count as one — if one falls, both fall. 💡 You don't have to change them all. Start with your e-mail, your bank and your main social accounts.
4. Set up a password manager Let it generate and store the passwords. You only remember the master password; make that one long and personal to you.
5. Protect your e-mail account with your strongest password Your e-mail is the key to all your other accounts: passwords can be reset from there. If your e-mail falls, the rest falls by itself.
6. Turn on two-step verification Turn it on for every account that supports it. Even if your password leaks, nobody can log in without the code on your phone. This single setting protects you more than the strength of your password does. 💡 An app-based code generator is safer than SMS.
7. Check for leaks There are free services that check whether your e-mail address has appeared in a known data breach. If it has, change the passwords of those accounts immediately.

⚠ This guide is general information. Yudum cannot be held responsible for the outcome of following it; for official procedures always rely on the institution's own statement. Steps and fees change over time.

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