Think of your password – if you can, it's probably terrible. It's probably the one you use for everything, but you add a number or change a letter each time so it's fine. Yeah, that one. That is a terrible password.
Is you password fewer than, or around, eight characters long? It's probably a terrible password.
Does your password mean something to you, like a favourite team or birthday? You guessed it, it's probably a terrible password.
Is it a real word, but with "1"s instead of "i"s, or "5"s instead of "s"s? Yep, probably terrible.
Did you stick an exclamation mark on the end to meet a special character requirement? Oh boy, probably terrible.
So what?
You may not think having a strong password is worth it, it's not like it's the password for your bank account. It's only your email account, or Facebook or whatever. And anyway, so what if someone gets your password?
Ha. Think about how much of your life is affected by your online accounts. Think what would happen if someone was able to gain access to your email account (spoiler – nothing good), because your password was "dickhead" (yes, that is genuinely in the top 1,000 most common passwords) or something equally stupid.
Well, there's no guarantee that any password is 100% secure. But not re-using passwords across multiple sites is the first step to greatly improving your security. So if "Random Website with terrible password security Limited" gets their passwords leaked, you aren't also using the same password on ten other sites.
Use a random password
Secondly, don't "choose" a password, generate one. Which brings me to a little tool I built because I got bored of clunky password generator websites which either looked crap or had too many steps to get a password. This was before many browsers & devices included a random password feature (which if you have it, you should definitely use).
My password generator is super simple, so if you want loads of features, go elsewhere. But if you want a secure password with minimum effort, that's what you'll get.
There are a few options, but you get a good password straight away. No choosing options and then getting a password.
How am I supposed to remember that?
Yes, it's long. Yes it's got weird characters. No you don't need to remember it. Get your browser/device to remember it, or use a password manager like 1Password.
That's it.