Tech Sense: May 2026

World Password Day 2026

World Password Day 2026

We observe World Password Day on the first Thursday of May each year. This year it occurs on May 7th. Each year I use this opportunity to encourage everyone to update his or her passwords. I often repeat various methods of creating secure passwords that are also easy to remember. If you enjoyed some of the methods I have suggested previously, feel free to look at some of my previous columns. This month I will be showing another means of creating secure passwords that are easy to remember or recover.

Password best practices include changing them at least annually, make sure each password is unique application or website, making passwords long, longer than 16 characters. Also make them a mix of upper and lower case characters, digits, one or more special characters.

1 The Dictionary Method

This method uses a traditional dictionary book. You may use an old one, or an abbreviated dictionary, or buy a used one from a library, or thrift store. Digital dictionaries may not work well for this.

Next, get a sheet of paper with ruled lines. In the first column number the lines from 1 to 26. In the second column, place the letters A through Z. Use the next two columns for page numbers and words.

I have written this for those that use paper, but I tend to use a spreadsheet, or a text editor like notepad, or Word.

2 Building the Codebook

To build your password codebook, flip the dictionary pages and stop on a random page. Write the page number into 2nd column. Write page numbers with at least three digits so, page two would be written as 002. Then select a random word from the page. A possible way of doing this is to determine the word from the page based on the page number. If you select page number 305, you might choose to use the fifth word defined on that page. Write the page number and the selected word in the next two columns.

Go to another dictionary page and repeat the process until the completion of all 24 lines. The words do not need to be in alphabetical order and is best keep in random order. I prefer words that are 5 to 9 letters.

Once completed add an additional row with the numbers 0 through 9 and below each digit put a special character. Find most of the symbols on top of the numbered digits of the computer keyboard. This might look as follows:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

? ! @ # $ % ^ & * :

3 How to use the Codebook

First, we will establish some rules (yes, just like the other methods we have used).

The first rule we need is one to select the letters from the website or system name. I will use the first two and the last two letters giving me AMAN for Amazon and FAOK for Facebook. We want to skip any duplicate letters but we always want to have at least three words. You can use any selection rule you want but make sure it gives you at least 3 words to choose.

Next rule, all words begin with a capital letter, other letters are lower case.

Next rule is to pick a symbol. Let’s pick the symbol below the digit making the next to last digit of the page number of the first word.

The final rule will select our numbers. I suggest we use the largest digit of each page number, skipping duplicates and put the digit between the page number and the next one.

Following the example codebook, for Amazon you would get:

• Pick first and last two letters, AMON

• Pick the symbol $

• Pick the numbers 6 largest for A, 5 largest with no repeats for M, 1 to avoid a duplicate 5 on the O, finally a 4 to avoid both the 5 and the 1 on the N.

For Amazon, this leads to; “Worse$Junker6Unfair5Yankee” and for face book it becomes;

• Pick letters FAOK

• We pick the symbol #

• Pick the numbers, 9 is the largest for page F, 6 is largest for A, 5 is the largest for letter O, and 1 is the highest unused letter for the letter K.

If duplicate numbers are a problem, create pin numbers you can use instead of using sample rule. For example the following pins all work 1592 6535 8973 2031 4903 4681 3572 5731 6823 0491. Then add all of the page numbers together and continue to that until you have a single digit number from 0 to 9. Use that number to select one of these combinations using the digits one at a time from each of these four digit number.

4 Additional Notes

Why does this work? It is because the words are select randomly, as are the numbers and the pages in the dictionary unless the attacker know which dictionary you are using. You could use almost any large book, but you wouldn’t have as much randomness due to having fewer words.

Instead of using a dictionary, you can use one of the word lists from the Electronic Freedom Foundation and roll dice to select the words. Do not however use the values of the dice as page numbers. They would identify the actual words breaking the security.

You can make this even more secure by using 5 instead of 4 words.

Each year when you are ready to update your passwords, you create a new codebook and start updating.

5 In the End…

Going back and reading my previous May columns will provide you with some other ways to create secure passwords. Have a happy World Password Day.

In the meantime, stay safe online!

I have provided a sample codebook. Please DO NOT USE THIS. Never share your codebook. I suggest keeping it in secure storage on your phone. Both Apple and Android provide secure storage on their phones. Or fold it up and keep it in your wallet or another safe location.

Sample Code Book