Nowadays I need passwords for just about everything – to log into e-mail, online banking, discussion boards, shopping or auction sites, and even this blog.

Passwords are often how you identify “it’s really you” – online.

Unfortunately, many people select passwords that are too weak and easy to remember. These can become invitations to hackers to impersonate you online and gain access to your personal or financial information and even expose you to identity theft.

So it’s important to use strong passwords.

What makes a password strong?

The following are 3 key ingredients:

• Use 8 or more characters – the more the merrier
• Include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols
• Avoid names and dictionary words

You should end up with a password that looks random. A strong password might look like this:

Mko09ijn!

This is a pattern on the keyboard.

But if you’re like me, you probably won’t be memorizing that kind of password anytime soon. The trick is to create a password that appears random yet is meaningful to you. And the trick is easier than you think.

First, think of a sentence or phrase that you can easily remember. Try to avoid famous quotes, which can be found easily on the Internet. Here’s an example that you can make work:

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address, 1932.

To turn the phrase into a password, use the first letter of each word:

Otwhtfifi

If you’ve got at least eight characters and mixed-case letters, you’ve got a decent password. But does it have the ingredients of a strong password?

Try tweaking your password to include numbers and symbols in a meaningful way. Here’s an example with some improvements:

Otwhtf-ifi32

I used a dash instead of a comma and added the 32 for the year.

Your password should still be easy for you to recall so long as you remember your original sentence or phrase.

You can find out how difficult your password is for hackers by using a fun online tool called Password Calculator. It estimates how long your password could stand up to a common attack.

My final example password results said that “Brute Force Attack will take up to 34856377305871204 years” to crack it.

Finally, it’s a good idea to use different passwords at different Web sites. You don’t have to come up with a bunch of phrases to memorize – simply add one or two letters of the Web site’s name to your strong password. Here are a couple examples using my password:

To log into Amazon, Otwhtf-ifi32Am

To log into eBay, Otwhtf-ifi32eB