You don't need special characters if you can use a passphrase. I use a passphrase for all my encryption passwords (usually 5-6 words long), which results in a

You don't need special characters if you can use a passphrase. I use a passphrase for all my encryption passwords (usually 5-6 words long), which results in a password which is 20-30 characters long. This is implicitly better than a 10 character phrase of mixed letters/numbers/symbols. The problem of course is that so many password entry forms (I'm looking at you, most-of-the-internet) have limits on the lengths of passwords. This needs to change. Hell, some even limit your ability to use special characters (no spaces? wtf.) The most egregious offense I've seen is an international banking site I use for my stock -- it limits your password to 8 characters, numeric only. I nearly shit myself. Of course, I immediately went in for their high security passcard that has a random 2d array of numbers in it, which is in addition to the password. Trying to perform any actions with the account requires you enter sequences from the array.