Jacques alerted me to an article about accounts on Facebook being taken over by scammers. You can read the article at http://redtape.msnbc.com/2009/01/post-1.html#posts
It reminded me of the importance of using secure passwords, even on websites that don’t hold important information about you like credit card information and such. A strong password will exist of at least 8 characters, preferably more and contain numbers, lower and uppercase letters and some symbols.
The problem most people have however, is having to remember all these complicated passwords…
You can of course keep track of your passwords using text documents, spreadsheets or a simple notebook. There are also software solutions, but let’s face it: most of us are pretty lazy and we just want something we can easily remember ourselves.
The favorite-book-title method
About 2 years ago I came across a suggestion to use the titles of your favorite books or songs to make passwords. If for example your favorite book is “Lord of the Rings - part 3: the Return of the King” you can turn this into a password like this: LotR-p3:tRotK
I used this system for a while, but now I had to remember which book was connected to which account. Soon enough I was having to try all kinds of different book title combinations and getting locked out of some accounts because I exceeded my number of allowed incorrect tries…
The easy-to-remember-sentence method
So I dropped this method and designed my own. What I do now is use a fixed sentence which has a flexible default reference to the site or account I use the password for. Here’s an example of such a sentence:
“My mother lives in New York and is a total digibeet with no FaceBook account for years to come.”
Translated into a password: mMliNY&=atDw-FBA4Ytc
With this system you:
- take the first letter of a word - if it’s a noun, use a capital (think German
); - use leetspeak where possible: to -> 2, for -> 4;
- replace words with symbols: and -> &, is -> = and no or not -> - (minus sign).
Plus you have the flexible element of the account info. When you login to facebook the password is mMliNY&=atDw-FBA4Ytc, but when you login to your Google Account it becomes mMliNY&=atDw-GA4Ytc and when you login to your website admin… well, you get the idea…
Now all you have to remember is 1 sentence while your password passes the strength test. 
Patricia
P.S. I do recommend that you have a few different sentences that you use for the really, really important passwords like for your internet banking account and such. Just keep them down to 5 max. The human brain can easily remember 5 items, some people manage up to 9, but with more than 9 you will definitely run into the same trouble of remembering as before…