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SQT: Choosing a Password

July 5th, 2008 by David Bradley >> 6 Comments

Saturday Quick Tip logoWhat’s the best password to use for your login? You wouldn’t use any of the following would you?

Your partner’s name
Your child’s name
Your pet’s name
Any of the last digits from your social security number
123456
“password”
Your city
Your college
Your football team
Your date of birth
Your partner’s date of birth
Your child’s date of birth
“god”
“letmein”
“money”
“love”

Surely not? Well some of you may do, as these are, according to IT Security, among the most popular passwords.

For inspiration on how to come up with some that’s less easy to guess or ascertain, check out my passwords for scientists post and my making your passwords stronger item.


Leave a comment ↓

  • Pachecus // Jul 6, 2008 at 1:32 am

    good points… my pass is xxxxxxxxxxx lol

    Pachecuss last blog post..One Year With Gmail Blog

  • David Bradley // Jul 6, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    Good one!

  • Ari Herzog // Jul 7, 2008 at 9:13 pm

    Do you remember the 1987 film, Spaceballs?

    In one scene, Dark Helmet incredulously exclaims that only an idiot would use the combination, 12345, on his suitcase lock; and by the next scene, we learn that President Skroob uses that very sequence on his luggage.

    If Hollywood can make us laugh about it, it’s no wonder that real people use similarly inane words for their computer passwords.

    This brings up a tangent, though: I frequent many websites, each requiring a password. I keep a Notepad file on my laptop in a personal folder that lists every user/pass combination, along with what email address (if applicable) is linked to that username (in case my password is wrong).

    I also use Firefox, which remembers passwords. Usually.

    I use a different password for each email address, bank account, etc. But for many sites (social media, for instance), the password is the same. Should it be different?

  • David Bradley // Jul 8, 2008 at 7:46 am

    Yeah, Spaceballs…I’d forgotten that movie. Good call.

    I think you’re leaving yourself wide open to all kinds of ID theft problems should your laptop ever be stolen. Even if you’ve encrypted that Notepad file (you have, haven’t you) and you’re using a Firefox master password, I think it would be a trivial matter to crack both unless you’ve got something very strong in place.

    I’d not recommend keeping an electronic copy of a password list on your premises at all. Do an encrypted unlabeled backup and store it offsite.

    And, definitely choose a different password for each SM site. If just one of those sites were broken into and all passwords laid bare, I think the chances of the thief trying all the password combos on other sites is quite high.

  • Ari Herzog // Jul 8, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Ironically, David, after I posted the above and before I saw your reply I googled for suggestions and stumbled upon this clever way to remember passwords. Which I’m in the process of overhauling to all of my sites.

    In essence, I now use a alphanumeric non-Dictionary phrase, e.g. Qwerty11, as the root. Then sites requiring password cause new characters, e.g. a password for Digg might be Dqwerty11g, though with specific letters capitalized and lowercased.

    I keep a different format for my email address passwords and personal finance passwords.

    Ari Herzogs last blog post..Economic Woes Aside, Rock & Roll Music Should Never Die

  • David Bradley // Jul 8, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    yeah, there are certainly lots of methods out there, based on an intracranial algorithm of some sort. In the past I suggested passwords for scientists. But, key to security is to test the strength of any passwords you come up with. I was quite surprised at how one test rated a password I thought was strong as only 3/10…quickly changed that.