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What makes a password strong?

Weak passwords are by far the most common way for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account. It is not difficult for someone to guess passwords based on words or personal information like dates or names. The following tips can help you choose a much more secure password.

• Adding uppercase letters, numbers or symbols to a password can make it stronger. For example: hiW7d$fk is stronger than hiwldik.
• Adding uppercase letters, numbers or symbols in the middle of a password is stronger than adding them to the start or end of the password. For example: hiW7d$fk is stronger than Hiwdfk7$.
• Joining two or more unrelated words together is vastly stronger than using any word you would find in a dictionary. For example: hill + computer for hillcomputer is much stronger than either hill or computer on their own.
• Joining parts of two or more words together is stronger still. For example: tisyll + sswo for tisyllsswo is stronger than multisyllablepassword.
• Combining all these rules together is stronger than any of them alone. For example: ti7$Sllsswo.