When an attacker wants to get into your online account or device, they'll usually attack the password since it's often the only thing securing it, unless you have two-factor authentication (2FA) switched on. Since many people don't bother with 2FA, this turns passwords into what's called a single point of failure.
We all know the annoyance of creating a new account online: you enter the password you want, and then the service bugs you about minimum length and using special characters. There's a reason you're being pushed to do this
The key to a good strong password is to use Lowercase & Uppercase Letters, numbers and one or more of the 33 symbol keys. But most important is the length of your password.
How effective is your password against adversaries who try to guess it or use a brute-force attack?
A brute force attack means that someone sets up a script to try all possible combinations of characters to find the password. So your only chance is to use a password that would take a very long time to guess (optimally, several millions of years)
Attackers will use two methods to attack your passwords: Brute Force Attack and a password dictionary. A Password Dictionary is a list of leaked passwords that is available oneline.
Using such lists is known as a dictionary attack, and any attacker attempting to unlock your account would try it before moving on to a brute force attack. So, if you use a password that is in a dictionary of common passwords, it doesn't matter how many bits it contains - it will get broken very quickly
Some Examples:
Password: tuhtyrs - Time to brute force: a few seconds
Password: Tuhtyrs88 - Time to brute force: 1 hour
Password: Tuhtyrs(88) - Time to brute force: 7 Months
Password: Tuhtyrs(88)1946 - Time to brute force: several thousand years
You can also use phrases as a password. Someting like Maryhadalittlelamb. This is a long password and strong but it would be in the password dictionary so you would not use it. Instead change the phrase to this Mary-Had-(16)-Little-Lambs. Easy to remember and it would take over a million years to hack.
....