One time in 2008, I tried to pirate a copy of Spore and got a virus that bricked my computer instead. Did I deserve to have my $600 laptop destroyed?
On this I call bulls**t. Did it also shoot flames out the USB ports and slap you with your own mouse?
You need to have crazy passwords for everything. According to our sister site Lifehacker, passwords that are long and include numbers, capital letters and symbols are great.
The problem with this is humans are awful at memorizing random assortments of characters and computers are great at attempting all possible combinations, brute forcing it. That randomized eight character password only has, let's say 72^8 possible combinations. 7.2e14.
A passphrase is always stronger. Even if you only used the 1000 most common words in the dictionary a five-word passphrase still has 1e15 combinations. 10 times more than your random eight characters, and more memorable. Then throw in your own variation.
Capitalize a random word:
2000^5 = 3.2e16, ten times stronger again
Make one of the words l33tsp34k:
5000^5 = 3e18, 1000 times stronger than the basic passphrase
Insert a single random number before, after, or between the words:
1000^5 x 10^5 = 1e20 combinations.