It’s amazing to me, but looking back over a decade of writing I find posts that still impress me, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Why is it that even smart, tech-savvy people like Mark Zuckerberg use, and reuse, dumb passwords.

His password? “dadada.” (…) How did the attackers get in? It looks as if Zuck made a basic security mistake: He reused passwords [Twitter and Pinterest].

Zuck could have avoided being hacked if he just read my blog.  Read other Golden Oldies here.

I have to say, this article about people’s frustration with passwords made me laugh—probably not the desired reaction.

I sent it to a friend and he said he related and asked why I didn’t.

When I told him I had a simple way to handle passwords he was incredulous and demanded I explain.

I did and his response was that I should share it here, because it would make people’s lives easier.

Who am I to argue? In the interests of making your life easier here are my so-called “secrets.”

The first thing to recognize is that all sites requiring passwords are not created equal, so I divide them into three categories.

1. Serious security for sites where being hacked has serious implications, such as your bank.
2. Moderate security for sites where hacking means being hijacked and can cause hurt your reputation and cause embarrassment, such as social networking sites.
3. Light security for all those informational and even subscription sites, such as NY Times where being hacked has no repercussions.

I use the same password for all the sites in the third category.

The second category depends partly on the site’s requirements, but I have a simple formula.

Let’s say it requires upper and lower case, a number, a symbol and is 11-14 characters long. “Zeusis#1god” has 11 characters and is easy to remember. Plus, you can also write it down as a word sentence and who’s going to know it’s a password?

For category one I mix up more numbers and symbols, for example, “I’m@659Park#27” has 14 characters.

No, that is not my address, but you can use a real address if it helps, just choose one that has no apparent connection to your current life, but is easy to remember; for example, your Aunt Lizzie’s home when you were a child (assuming she doesn’t live there now).

In the article people complain about the security questions, such as your first kiss, etc.

I don’t remember any stuff like that, but who says you need to? You can put any response you want as long as the question will trigger your memory.

So the answer to ‘my first love’ becomes Oreos or NY Nut Fudge. It’s not like they check your answers.

They can ask anything they want and you can interpret it any way you want. Passwords do not require honesty.

What about writing them down?

I have my Ameritrade account number and password written down, but not all together. The account number is in two pieces in two unconnected places. Same with the password.

And if you do keep a list and someone breaks into your home passwords will be the least of your worries.

I hope this helps you as much as it helped my friend.

Here’s a quick update to make passwords even easier to remember.

Use the site name in your password.

Twitter, for example. Password: Birds*tweet@6am.

Easy to remember, fairly hard to crack.

Flickr image credit: Paul O’Rear

This entry was posted on Monday, July 11th, 2016 at 1:15 am and is filed under Golden Oldies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: security
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.