Your mother has one. Your sister has one. Your kid has one. The neighbor next door has one. You guessed it, a password. Statistically speaking you’re likely to have at least five different passwords. From bank accounts to Gmail there are passwords for everything these days. Worse yet, most of them have different password requirement. Four to eight alphanumeric characters, pin numbers, mother’s maiden name and so on and on.

The sad part is these passwords are really only keeping out the casual snoop. True hackers and bonafide thieves have enough tools at their disposal to crack nearly any password every day users utilize. Mostly because users don’t pick the most secure passwords. They pick the most convenient.

I’ve been guilty of it. With so many accounts out there that require passwords it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Let alone typing them into the computer every time you use such and such service. Convenience wins out. And truth be known, most of the time it doesn’t really matter. Odds are you aren’t important enough for any one to hack your Gmail account or your Yahoo cribbage scores.

The problem is most people use the same password for their low priority accounts as they do for their wireless router or online bank account. Here, I think we should all agree is the place where convenience cannot win out over the need for security. The damage that can be done on this level by not only thieves but hackers looking to use your computer, ISP and identity is staggering.

A kid parked out in front of your house can hijack your wireless signal and download a few thousand MP3’s in a couple of hours. All the while it’ll be you the MPAA comes after. When their lawyers subpoena your ISP on where all that supposed illegal traffic came from it’s your address that will pop up. You, not the war driver (hacker who drives from wireless to wireless) will be in court ponying up your kid’s college fund.

Now that you’re convinced you need a stronger password, how do you come up with one. There are a number of ways. The best is to come up with something that you’ll remember while still maintaining a high level of security. Password cracking programs work easily with nearly any alphanumeric combination. Anything is crackable. The point is to make yours enough of a pain as to take the hacker’s computer such a long time as to not be worthwhile, so he’ll move on to someone else.

Use the password you currently have but replace the numbers with the symbols corresponding on your keyboard. Hit the shift key and replace 1 with a ! and 2 with a @ and so on and so forth.

For the word portion of your password use the same word but when you type it move 2 places down the ABC’s. So if BOB is your password it becomes DQD. Thus, slowing down those cracks that rely on recognizable words from the dictionary and language databases.

With any luck this should be easy to remember and still foil most casual hackers looking to break into your computers and bank accounts. If you’re still worried, there are even more high level encryption programs you can pick up. They’ll cost you money and ease of use but you’ll be even safer. In the end, it’s up to you.