Passwords ... in practice
How to use passwords
Do you need to change your password? Here's how.
- The problem:
Passwords these days come in two 'Flavours'.
There's the sort that needs to be secure - say for logging onto the University network, or into an online banking service.
The other sort you use to identify yourself in a context where security isn't a priority - an example might be logging on to a newspaper's web site.
The problems may begin when you mix the two sorts ...
Choosing Good Passwords
For things like bank accounts, your email, logging on to the University network, you'll need a secure password - and a different one for each service.
Choose a secure password to contain letters and numbers, you may mix upper and lower case if the system allows, and avoid anything that appears in a dictionary or of a number with which you can be associated.
People aren't good at remembering jaw stretching strings though. Here's suggestions for making up a password which is strong, but can be remembered. Choose a word and alter it.
Throw a hyphen and a handful of numbers into a word that people won't associate with you in the first place - e.g
- North Stoke becomes
n0r7h-5t0k3, - brassmill becomes
8ra55-mi11.
Follow this and you'll be picking better passwords than most ...
Choosing a Good Weak Password
If security isn't an issue, there's nothing wrong with choosing an easy to remember word as a password - it's good to avoid reusing one of your secure passwords. Better to use a simple word that's easily remembered for all situations where you're happy that security isn't an issue. Password cracking software, or even a virus, can submit every word in a dictionary in an attempt to break into a system, so a weak password may be no good at all if there's a need for security.
Mark Annand • Site updated April 12th 2013 • Site Counter:
All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.All before you, in this world, is smoke and shadows.
Words found on a door lintel in the garden of a house in the Cretan village of Argiroupolis.
The lintel is a fragment from the city state Lappa, which occupied the same site.
Fifteen hundred years later, when you use the web, from time to time you might well feel that the author was on to something. And if you work with particle physics, you'll know he was ...