Password

A password is an arbitrary string of characters chosen by a user or system administrator and used to authenticate the user who attempts to log in to a computer system or network, in order to prevent unauthorized access to an account.

Password security
A favorite activity among intrusive computer hackers is writing programs which attempt to discover or "crack" passwords. Unimaginative ones will use lists of commonly chosen passwords, such as people's names (spelled forward or backward), or a "" which attempts various combinations for accounts which have short passwords. It is recommended that to defeat such methods, passwords should use a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numerical digits, and avoid proper names or real words. For greater security, use of a longer password with punctuation characters is also encouraged.

If you have trouble remembering random strings of characters, make up an acronym like "ihGr8trmP" ("I have great trouble remembering my password").