How do I choose a good password?

Choosing a secure password is one of the most important parts of setting up your Blogger account. If someone breaks into your account and changes your password and email address, they will have effectively stolen your blog and you will be unable to get it back. The following is some advice on choosing your password.

What NOT to Do
The following things should not be used as your password, or even as a part of it:

• Your username.
• Your real name.
• Any name at all.
• Your birthday, phone number, address or social security number.
• Any dictionary word, in any language.
• Dictionary words with common number/letter substitutions, such as zeros for the letter O, ones for the letter L, 3's for E, etc.
• Any of the sample passwords you find here or elsewhere on the internet.

Some Good Suggestions
These are some ideas that will help you create a good password and keep it safe:

• Include punctuation marks, such as .,!@# etc.
• Use a mix of capital and lowercase letters.
• Make your password at least 8 characters long. The longer it is, the more secure it will be.
• Choose an interesting phrase, a line from a poem, or a section of song lyrics. Then use the first letter from each word to construct your password. Make sure you don't accidentally create dictionary words this way!
• Go to a busy street or parking lot and write down the first three or four liscense plates you see. Remove the duplicate letters and numbers and make your password from the remaining ones.
• Find other ways of getting random letters and numbers, such as opening books and taking the third letter from the first ten nouns you see. Be creative!

An Example
Let's create a good password, just to show you one example of the process:

• We'll start with a line from Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky: Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
• Now, let's take the second letter from each word: wrnhloiyninha.
• There are some duplicate letters in here, so we might want to replace them with numbers and/or other symbols, like this: wrnhloiy!3%7a.
• Just for fun, let's capitalize the letters that came from adjectives: wRnhLoiy!3%7a.
• The result is a pretty weird looking but hard to break password: wrnhloiy!3%7a. It also has an added advantage, which is that we used a system of sorts to create it, so we'll have a chance of figuring it out again if we forget it. When you create your own password, you can make up a system like this that might be easier for you to remember.

Keeping Your Password Safe

• Never tell anyone your password.
• Never write your password down. Even though your password will look random to others, you should have a way to easily remember it yourself so that you do not have to write it down.
• Change your password every few months.

Note: You can change your password by editing your user profile.