It can be challenging to create unique and challenging passwords. But it’s important to spend the time to create them and then do what is necessary to protect them. The last thing you want is someone diving into your bank account and accessing your funds or taking over your social media profile and scamming your friends list in your name. Here are some password ideas that will help you create the perfect passwords.

1. Use Random Words

An effective way to generate passwords is to string together random words that are seemingly unrelated. These words may not be random to you, but together don’t look like they are related. For example, AnaheimAirplaneFamilyWeek, which can be remembered as “Anaheim is where I fly my family for a week’s vacation each year.”

2. Generate an Entire Phrase

Another way to generate a strong password is to use a lengthy but complete phrase. The phrase should be something that means something to you so that you can easily remember it. The more specific you can be, the better. For example, MydogwalksdownDaisyStreetdaily is easy to remember but may not be something that a hacker would know and, thus, guess.

3. Create a Custom Acronym

Acronyms are ways to shorten phrases or titles and can be an effective way to generate a password. If you have a phrase you can easily remember, you can use the first letter of each word to create your own acronym. For example, “2020 was the year I moved into my house” can be made into 2020wtyImimh.

4. Create a Keyboard Code

You can increase a phrase’s sophistication by creating a keyboard code. For example, you can use the phrase “WaikikiBeach” but take the character that is above and to the right of each character in the phrase, which would give you 3w9o9oh4wfu.

5. Switch Vowels Out

Use a phrase that you know well and switch out one vowel with another. This makes the words in the phrase less sensible and harder to guess. If you want to get really complicated, you can switch out more than one vowel. For example, you may choose to switch the letter “a” with the letter “e.” This would make “Taketheplatestothetable” Tekethepletestotheteble.

6. Shorten Words

Take a phrase and shorten each of the words in the phrase. You might decide to remove the first two letters of each word. Note that this will eliminate some words. For example, “Wednesday is hump day” would read dnesdaymyy.

7. The Math Method

By creating a mathematical formula, you can incorporate letters, numbers and symbols into your passwords. For example, MyDog+MyCat=2tails writes out the words you are adding together to get the result of the formula.