As I come up on the end of the first full week of school I have a few of the usual stories to share. One of the typical problems I deal with at the start of school is the number of students who forgot their passwords over the summer. It's a steady stream this week and probably through next week.
Not to sound sexist but it seems that more young ladies come in than young men. Not sure why. What's also funny is that the young men usually have a password ready while the ladies have to think about it before typing. Of course neither observation really tests the students password. So frankly, it means nothing.
So a long time ago, I wrote a document on How to Pick a Good Password. It's a feeble rescue but I spend a lot of time saving teenagers from their own passwords. Useless Nexus keeps trying to educate the youth on making passwords they won't forget but that no one else can guess!
Does anyone have any useful tricks or tips they use? I'd love to have some more ideas to offer the students.
That's my Feeble Report for the week!
Good to hear you're keeping
Good to hear you're keeping the passwords safe Michael ;) I heard a great tip from someone I used to work with about making passwords that are easy to remember and hard to guess.
The idea goes like this, you pick your favorite song whatever it may be and go through the first line of lyrics taking the first letter of each word and writing it down. You can then substitute numbers and upper/lowercase characters if you want but as long as don't go round telling everyone what your favorite song is and how you picked your password it's pretty safe.
You cannot forget it as you can always looking up but at the same time it would be hard for someone else to look it up unless you tell them. I have to be honest I've only used this method once or twice but it works pretty well. It's not perfect but then, what is? :)
You could also choose any line of the song as long as you remember which one to mix it up a bit, take the line backwards maybe, there are plenty of options.
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A puff of smoke and he appears... a little bewildered and in urgent need of munchies... where's the fridge? :) The Human Cloud (Danny Blaze)
I like that,
I like that tip Dan, That's one that teenagers will go for as well. Thanks.
Michael Johnson http://michael.mjohnson.net