How do you manage passwords?

[Redlorryyellowduck]

I must admit I'm guilty of using the same few passwords for everything.
There must be maybe 100 things in my life that need passwords, and I really should up the security I know.
I presently have a little book but there must be a better way?

Norton Vault password manager, it's great

@MistySkiesAfterRain

I did a course on this. One of the safest is three unrelated words and some punctuation

Example

Donkeyfingercartwheel!20

Apparently they take forever to crack.

I do 3 random words too after GCHQ said this was safer than systems that are so complicated nobody can remember them.

1password.
Password manager.
Similar to last pass

Thank you all so much for the replies!

Can I ask some questions of those who use apps please? Can you retrospevely set / change passwords for sites you are already set up on? And what happens if you want to log on from your laptop one day but phone the next (I'm not an Apple user).

I'm leaning towards a note book with strong passwords as suggested, but realise this is probably quite old fashioned and runs the risk of the passwords book being lost....unless you take photos of it and save that somewhere?

I used to work in cyber security and saw the details of a very big breach. There were so many passwords that had the name of the company in them. The first thing a hacker is going to do is add the company name to a brute force attack so that part of your password is pointless, if your password is 12amazon87 your password is basically 1287 because that's the only part they'd have to crack, that'll be cracked in seconds. All my colleagues use password managers and if you have the option of 2fa where they send you a code to your phone or an app then use it, it's much better than a secure password

I have a few 'unique' words, as in, words from a historical context that are vanishingly unlikely to be guessed (and I don’t mean things like 'Napoleon' or 'Antoinette' - massively more obscure than that).

I combine these with a series of symbols and numbers used as either suffixes or prefixes. Sometimes I use symbols to replace letters within the words too.

I have a written crib-sheet but never write down the actual password, I use a prompt phrase that will make me remember the password...so if the word was ‘ Napoleon', I might write some fairly obscure phrase that I knew would make me immediately think 'Napoleon'.

It works for me. I can’t help being worried on some deep level about handing control of my passwords to an app.

@Spaghettio

I have a system that incorporates the name of each website.

Significant numberwebsitesignificant number

For example:

1979Amazon2015

Then I change the website name. I will always remember it, but it's specific to each website.

I do something similar using the first and last letter of the website name,plus one of 4 different words that are chosen depending on the first letter of the website name , then I have a a set of numbers I use at the end. Sometimes those numbers are replaced by the characters which share that number key on the keyboard and sometimes I use a capital letter if required

It sounds complicated but it means my password book says things like

Usual password, but character instead of number in last space

Usual password with caps start

You just need to add something like

1980@Aldi2022

That covers most website requests

Can you retrospevely set / change passwords for sites you are already set up on? And what happens if you want to log on from your laptop one day but phone the next

The password managers mentioned in the thread like last pass etc all have apps you can have on your phone and laptop, chrome extensions etc, you sign in using the masterpassword to whichever device.
And you can update passwords stored really easily to the various entries if you want to change passwords.