Voodoo Education Article

A word or two about passwords: Privacy Online: Passwords – Size Matters Which do you think is the best password: “#$4Gyo89” or “RubaDubDub3meninatub”? Actually it’s the second one. The first example has eight characters in it and can be cracked by special software within four hours. The second, longer password would take hundreds of years to be cracked by the same software simply because of its length and the laws of probability. Here are some guidelines for creating secure passwords: v Change your passwords on a regular basis. Rule of thumb is every three months for non-critical sites such as social networking sites, and every month for critical sites such as your bank account logins. v Using the example above, longer passwords are more difficult to crack even if they are phrases that are in common usage. v The use of special characters, upper and lower case letters, and numbers also make cracking passwords more difficult for the bad guys. v Have separate passwords for each account. If you use the same password for a number of accounts, while convenient, presents the hacker who cracks one of them with a much larger bounty of information. v Avoid passwords that contain your name, children’s names, birth dates, home towns, and other publically available information. v Never use numbers such as your passport, driver’s license, or social security numbers v Avoid some of the obvious suspects: ABCDEF, 123456, Password, etc. So, after you have created all these passwords, how do you keep track of them? One thing NOT to do is write them all down on paper and keep that paper close to your computer! There are several websites out there now such as Dropbox that allows you to store information (often for free) in cyberspace. That way, you only have to remember one password to get to the rest of them. Google has a program called LastPass which will automatically log you in to any number of websites while logged into your Google account. While nothing is entirely secure, these methods seem to have some good security protocols in place. Remember if large companies or governmental agencies can be hacked and even shut down, you can always be a target.