Many people believe that substituting letters with symbols (like P@$$w0rd) makes passwords strong. In reality, password length is far more important than complexity.

Each additional character multiplies the number of possible combinations exponentially. A 20-character password using only lowercase letters has more entropy than a 10-character password using all character types.

Passphrases — sequences of random words — are both easy to remember and extremely strong. Four or five random words joined together create passwords that are practically unbreakable while remaining human-friendly.

The best password strategy: use a password manager to generate and store unique, long, random passwords for every account. Your master password should be a memorable passphrase of 4+ random words.