Never use personal information as a password.

Your spouse's name, the street on which you live, your social security number or your pet's name are all easily guessed.

Don't use English or Foreign language words. Super password guessing software tries these words first.

Don't use keyboard sequences such as QWERTY. Don't use passwords made up of a string of one letter or number, such as 333333, or a sequence of numbers, like 12345.

Use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, or letters and numbers mixed with keyboard symbols.

Such passwords are really hard to remember. Most people will tell you not to write your passwords down, but if you store your handwritten passwords in a really safe place, I don't think you have much to worry about. Nobody can hack into your sock drawer from Russia.

If you don't want to write your passwords down, use a mnemonic password. Mnemonic passwords are easy to remember but nearly impossible for others to guess. For example, you could make a password out of the first letters of our past four presidents' last names, making Democratic presidential initials uppercase and Republican initials lowercase and separating presidential initials by how many years they served in office. So Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Carter would be:  C8b4r8C4