If a password's going to be effective, it needs to be something that's impossible to guess. In other words, it needs to be more imaginative than $u$1eQ. Consider the following when working up a strong password.

• Length: By making your password at least eight to ten characters long, you considerably reduce the chances that anyone can ever hack it.
• Character combination: Use as many different characters as possible. If part of your password is a number, for example, hit the Shift key a couple times when entering those numbers, changing them to symbols.
• Obvious choices: Don't use your birthday, your name, your favorite team or player's name, your dog's name, your favorite TV character's name . . . you get the idea. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't even use a word that's in a dictionary, even if it's in a foreign dictionary. There exist several hackers' applications designed to break passwords that are based on dictionary words, even if they're spelled backwards or incorporate a number or two.
• Memorable phrase: Say you like the movie Casablanca. The popularly remembered phrase from that film is "Play it again, Sam," but what Rick actually said is "Play it, Sam. You played it for her; you can play it for me." By using the first letters of each word, you've got the password PiSYpifhycpifm. By substituting a couple of numbers and symbols for the letters, you could come up with the password: P1$Ypifhycp!fm.

The password created using the infamous phrase uttered by Rick at the Café Americain meets all the criteria for a strong password: It's fourteen characters long, it uses a combination of letters (both uppercase and lowercase), it's not an obvious word, and it's not a word found in the dictionary.