Passwords are required for online accounts at various websites, social media accounts, online banking accounts, access to your email addresses, and for the protection of personal and confidential information in order to avoid unwelcomed and disastrous data breaches and data losses. Passwords must be strong and secure. Strong and secure passwords should be long, at least ten characters, and must contain numbers, alphabets and special characters, but should not contain personal or business addresses, names of popular landmarks, dictionary names, names of favourite cars, names of pets, birthdays, bible verses, names of movie stars, short dialogues in movies, proverbs, and other common names. Even if you are using a password manager for all your passwords, you will still need a strong and secure password to access the other passwords on your password manager.
However strong a password is, if it is written down somewhere, and there is unauthorized access to it, it can be fatal and catastrophic. We are therefore going to learn how to use peg systems based on mnemonics to process passwords. The peg system codes the numbers, alphabets and special characters into peg words. The peg words are then used to form a sequence of sentences in order to chain or link the peg words sequentially and coherently together. If you memorize the sentences in the correct order, you can be able to sequentially and coherently extract the peg words and then decode them into the original characters in order to obtain the original passwords.
The peg systems we will use are the following:
- Number Rhyme Peg System
- Number Shape Peg System
- Phonetic Number Peg System
- Number-Object Peg System
- Alphabet Rhyme Peg System
- Special Character Rhyme Peg System
This book is unique in that lots and lots of passwords had been generated in it. There are innumerable examples and practice exercises. Some of the generated passwords are really indubitably and indisputably, aesthetically elegant, and you may be comprehensibly tempted to use them as they are. You are, however, advised not to use any of the passwords generated in this book without modifying it with your own numbers, alphabets and special characters and/or jumbling the characters around to change it. Never use any password in this book as it is.
You can individually memorize the relevant peg words and some examples already given in this book, and try and see whether you can recall the original passwords. Use this as a test run before working through the practice exercises. You can also use some of the numerous passwords generated in this book to test the ability of your friends and peers to master these memorization techniques.
Have fun!
