World Password Day 2022
I’m not trying to be clever here, but I may come across as a wiseacre (as they used to call it). Passwords have become the bane of everyone’s existence. Do you remember them all, or do you have a hidden cheat sheet to recall them (like Sam in “Ghost”)? When I used to work in a bank, you were never meant to write your computer passwords down, anywhere, and safe combinations had to be sealed in an envelop and kept under lock and key by the branch manager, in case of emergency.
They say the strongest passwords contain numbers, letters and at least one special character, with one of those letters in upper case. They suggest that it shouldn’t be based on the name of your family pet, or a birthday, or even your Social Insurance Number (and especially not your Social Insurance Number).
I have a series of numbers that are based on a British Rail ticket I once had in the UK. Those numbers have stayed with me now for slightly more than 35 years. But I never use them in passwords, because, as a number sequence, they aren’t random anymore (at least to my mind).
The examples shown above demonstrate how you can set up passwords and which ones are strong and which ones are weak. The “**” in each case can have variations on a theme, like up to 100 different digits to finish the password. This allows you to change them often and keep the original format intact. And where you have to have a great number of passwords, you can assign the variations to follow your own logic, known only to you.
The scenario I suggested with this post’s title is one that cannot be helped, but if you need to, write the passwords down and keep the list where you won’t forget them, but where no one else would find them. Now, that’s your challenge for today:
cdsmiller17 