Making unique passwords from the same string of characters, including any string of characters in a web address

Abstract

Very strong, complex, unforgettable passwords unique to each web site are created for a user's Web site authentication by altering all or part of the web site address using, in a preferred embodiment, a predetermined encoding dictionary with more a single code for each entry and unique to each user. The entries in this preferred embodiment are single characters including characters used for words, punctuation, symbols and numerals; each single entry character appears more than once in the dictionary. The codes are of various character lengths and can be comprised of the same characters used in the entries. In a Web site authentication embodiment as well as for embodiments not used for Web site authentication, including pass-protecting files, the string of characters altered by encoding can be a private word or group of words. In another embodiment the password created by encoding is pseudo-randomly scrambled by using a seed unique to the user in order to create the password actually used. In yet another embodiment, the password is created without the encoding step, by pseudo-randomly scrambling the web address or other user-selected character string using a seed unique to the user.