Passwords
Passwords are everywhere. You need one for your internet account. Your mailserver asks for it every time you
try to get an E-mail. Many also ask for it when trying to send E-mail. When logging in to Google Mail: you
need your password. All your merchant accounts at Ebay and such require you to choose a password.
Of course you can choose one password and use it in every location, but that will make you quite vulnerable.
If the villain finds out what your password is, (s)he can access all the details you want to keep to yourself.
A stupid thieve will log in to your E-mail provider and change the password. But a smart thieve will just
instruct it's mail client to log in to your mailserver and fetch all mail without deleting it.... In the
former case, you immediately know what's going on. In the latter case, you need to be an expert to find out at
all.
A password can be strong or weak. Below I have made a table in which are some weak (at the left) and strong (at the right) passwords:
| Weak | Strong | Reason... |
|---|---|---|
| 12345678 | 31415962 | These are the first digits of 'PI' |
| QWERTYUIOP | QwerTyUIop | Mixed case at seemingly random places |
| JohnKaren | Joh94Kar96 | Combine names with year of birth |
| Betty | Ytteb | Name reversed (not very strong) |
| beanbag | BaggoBeans | Phonetics and capitals mixed |
| BaggoBeans | baGGobeaNS007 | Random capitalisation plus a number you can remember |
| soepkip | PikPoes | Word reversed phonetically and capitalised |
| seaferry | SeeFerry | Pronunciation is identical. Spelling is not. |
| nonsense1 | GobbledyGook12 | Comparable words, totally diferent spelled. |
| IpreferPI | IpReFerPi | Capitals again. |
Choosing a password
Choosing a strong password is easy. Remembering one is the difficult part. That's why you need to choose a
word that has potential to be changed without loosing the ability to be remembered.
Passwords are language specific. I live in The Netherlands. We speak dutch (not german!) and all over the
world are perhaps 25 million people like me. That makes strong passwords! Not because my words are very
strong. My advantage is the fact that I don't choose english passwords! Over 240 million people in the US
think my passwords are just random sequences of letters!
Of course it is not realistic (or wanted, from my point of view) that the lot of you learn dutch. But if you speak a minority language: USE IT!
One good method is to use correct words, that are combined into nonsense conglomerates of letters. An example:
Karate (as in the sport) and Hog (as in pork) makes a KarateHog. Sounds like a strong word to me. You can
combine Karate with a lot of animals and objects. Karate is a nice words since the letters are close together
on the keyboard so people watching over your shoulder will have to be very eager to catch all your keystrokes.
Adding numbers to your passwords is a good method as well. Try to avoid 007, single digits at the end, as well
as too obvious numbers as your house number. The year of birth is better. Only intimate friends know that. Be
free to add the '19' or not. Reverse it.
If you're a technical person, the mathematical constants make fine suffixes for already fine passwords. Just add the first four digits of 'e' or 'pi'.
Keeping passwords
As computer and internet users most of us have zillions of passwords. Luckily we have the automatic login managers who really help us out. Still, if you have a hard disk crash, all your passwords are gone. So you need to backup your passwords.
I make password backups in an exercise book like the ones used in schools. One page per website or account. That leaves some room for you to regularly change the passwords.
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