Although I am quite aware this title brings back horror to both men and women, it being for complete different reasons, I couldnt think of a better title.
No, this is no spam to sell you something, but I am going to convince you that you should have some enlargements. Tho not thru pills, surgery or any wondercremes.
How long is yours really? 6, 7 or even 8? That is really not big enough anymore. Nowadays you should have at least 12, but preferable even longer.
You can stop looking at yourself now, I want you to think back about the last time you typed your password.
Was it longer then 8 characters? Since if not, even a cheap videocard crack your password within half a days. Ofcourse this all depends on the complexity of your password, but doesnt make that much of a difference, besides you dont really want complexity.
I know that for years IT people, including me, have been advicing and enforcing complex passwords. Have we been wrong all along? No, 10 years ago that was a valid security advice.
However in the current times that advice has been outdated and we should start changing our mindset on what a secure password is when an average computer can crack a 10 character password within 1 day.
Now think about the following, what is more easy to remember and type “P@s$W0rD!”(8 characters) or “Iwant1veryeasypassword!”(22 characters)/(27 characters).
The first password might be shorter and therefor less keypresses, but you have to admit that you would have to think about it more. Was the first or the second ‘s’ to be typed as a dollarsymbol? Was the ‘o’ a capital ‘o’ or the number 0?
The second is a lot more keys to press, but it feels natural since it’s more a normal sentence you are typing, you write the capitals where it is supposed to and add in an exclamationmark.
I dont think anyone can say the second is harder to remember and at worst it takes a little longer to type, but if you get used to it you will start typing it faster.
And passwords like the second one are so easy to come up with. Use a sentence with a reference to a movie, song or quote that you like, making it personal and not common.
Here are a few of my suggestions: (I made these up and aint using any of these myself, so dont bother trying to hack me now )
- “4 Beatles in a yellow submarine”(31 characters)
- “I saw all 6 Starwars movies 3 times!”(26 characters)
- “There is no I in team, we are 1!”(32 characters)
Now I know that not all websites allow you to use these long passwords yet, for example my own insurance company didnt allow me to create a password longer then 12characters.
Maybe your own IT department might not even allow these passwords, but feel free to show them this text. Any person in IT has to see that this is more secure and easier to use.
Yet all these reasons should be no reason for you not to at least try to use a long password, since in the end your password is your responsibility!
I hope you gained some insights about your own (password) size and sincerely hope that when we will meet, you can and will say that yours is bigger then mine!!
PS: I got my inspiration to write about this after I saw the following cartoon on XKCD
0 Responses.