Passwords: Is yours safe and secure?
People today can easily have as many as fifty passwords. One for
each e-mail, another for stock portfolios, another for online bill paying,
another for drug prescription refills, games, and so on. Although someone
stealing your password on a game network may not do as much damage as someone
who figures out your ATM PIN, the issue of identity loss remains the same.
Your private information and your entire digital identity are only as secure
as your password.
A bad password is one that is easily guessed, such as your name or nickname,
names of anyone in your family, your pet's name, your birthday or family birthdays,
your phone number, Social Security number, or address.
Good passwords have both letters and numbers, upper and lower case letters,
and at least six characters. The very best passwords are those that do not
include words that can be found in the dictionary (like george727) but are
gibberish (such as n4L9h2md.)
Use upper and lower case letters if the system requesting the password can
distinguish between them. It makes your passwords that much stronger because
you now have, effectively, 52 letters to work with. And dON't think yoUr enGLiSH
teacher is watching WHeN you chOose where to put your capitaL letters.
Longer passwords are harder to crack and passwords that mix letters and numbers
or punctuation symbols (hyphens, for instance) are even more difficult. My
personal favorite method for choosing passwords is to use a favorite phrase
together with a private date.
“The Sound and The Fury” may be combined with your date of birth,
07-17-1975, and capitalization to yield t07S17t19F75. The phrase and date
are easily remembered, but the password itself is not.
A final consideration: How do you keep track of your passwords? On a sticky
note posted to the side of your monitor? Keep your list of passwords in a
safe place—away from your computer! ‡
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