Web Account Creation Tips

Although I consider it OK to use the same user name across multiple accounts, there’s no question that using a different user name for each account along with a strong, unique password is probably a good idea. The more difficult you make it for hackers to guess your information, the more secure you will be.

In my last post, I gave some tips on creating strong, unique passwords for websites. In this post, I give you three tips on how to create unguessable, unique usernames that you can pair with those passwords for even more security.

1. Add a special character, the first three letters of the domain name for the site, then you normal login name. For example, for the foobar.com domain, you could use $fooJoeBlow as a user name. Use the same character and the same pattern for your login name so you can easily remember it.
2. Use a PIN, part of the domain name and your name. For example, take the last three characters of your Windows key, the first three characters of the domain name, and your login name: YXKFooJoeBlow.
3. Use the title bar of the site’s login page. For example, you could use SecJoeBlow for this site as your user name.

The user name is not nearly as important as the password as far as uniqueness is concerned, but it’s another factor that you can use to make your online experience more secure. I don’t use this particular method, but it’s worth implementing.