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Choosing a good P@ssw0rdMay 05 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Choosing a secure password makes it more difficult for unauthorized people to access your sensitive data. Most people make common mistakes when choosing a password. Following are some tips to help you choose the right password: Avoid names of pets, spouses and children. Avoid birthdays, anniversaries and social-security numbers. Avoid words that can be found in dictionaries. Use both lower-case, upper-case and non-alpha characters in your password. Do not use the same password for all of your accounts and files. Make sure it is at least eight characters long. Do not write the password down. Think of a phrase and use the first letter or number from each word of that phrase. For example, if you can easily remember "The engagement ring to Beth costs $2,895" your password would be "TertBc$2,895" (Don't use that one now that everyone has seen it) Notice how the B and T are capitalized. Since Beth is a proper name that would help you to remember to capitalize the B and since the sentence begins with a capital, you would know to capitalize the T. Notice also how we have two non-alpha characters; "$ and ,". The password consists of twelve characters and is a very good choice. Now, obviously using all of these tips presents a big challenge. If you have six accounts and three files to protect, remembering nine passwords is not that easy. In this case you can use a password manager. While I do not officially endorse or recommend any particular product, there are many good shareware password managers. Check out Davecentral.com for a nice comprehensive list. The concept is simple. You remember one password to get into your manager and the software remembers all the rest. The software usually employs some kind of strong encryption to protect all of your passwords. Part II: How secure are your documents? As an branch of my computer service business, I offer password recovery. How long does it take me to recovery a password and which passwords can I recover? Look below: Word 97/2000- Up to 10 days Word 95- instantly Excel 97/2000- Up to 10 days Excel 95 and below- instantly Lotus 1-2-3- instantly MS Access- instantly Symantec ACT!- instantly MS Backup- instantly Filemaker- instantly MS Mail- instantly MS Money- instantly Lotus Organizer- instantly MS Outlook- instantly Paradox- instantly MS Project- instantly Quicken- instantly MS Schedule+- instantly Lotus WordPro- instantly Ws_Ftp- instantly ..and a few others These passwords are recovered 100% of the time. So, why am I (and others) able to do this? In my opinion, it is due to US government restrictions on the export of strong encryption. The government has stated that no one in the US can export anything stronger than 40-bit encryption. The software companies, because they want to market to a global audience, uses encryption that has already been compromised. The real security may not be in the software itself, but how you choose to share your personal information. Use caution, restraint and common sense and you will most likely never have a problem. _______________________________________________________________________ Note: You may have seen this text on a password recovery website that I own. I am not listing the site here so that you may believe that I am unbiased and do not have a alterior profit motive. It is not plagiarized. I own this web site and have written this opinion. Stay safe!  |
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by PacManY2J
by ladyconsumer
