TechDuke

So what’s a person to do? You can’t even remember what you had for dinner last night or what time your son’s soccer practice is. How are you going to remember what your password is?

The first thing that most users try is to simply use a word that is familiar to them. Many users will choose things like their own name, their children’s names, or the name of a pet.

Going back to the key analogy—if your password is like your key to unlock your computer, then choosing a password based on easily obtainable personal facts is like locking your door and placing the key under the doormat. It is better than nothing, but not by much.Through simple research or just conversation over coffee, an attacker can pick up personal information about you such as your spouse’s name, children’s names, birth dates, and more.

It is important that you choose a strong password. What makes a password strong? Length is one factor. Another is to use a variety of character types. Passwords are generally case sensitive, so “password” is different from “Password.” Of course, capitalizing the first letter might be the first thing someone would try if they were guessing, so using something like “pasSword” or “pasSwoRd” would be even stronger.

When you create a password in Windows XP, you are also asked to enter a word or phrase to act as a password hint. If you have issues remembering your password,Windows XP can display the hint to try to trigger your memory so you can recall it. Click Control Panel | User Accounts | Change an Account, and then select a user and click Change Password to create a new password in Windows XP.

Aside from avoiding the use of personal data or information as your password, you should also avoid all dictionary words. One trick is to substitute numbers or special characters that look similar to letters.This is common in hacker lingo where “elite” becomes “l33t” and “hacker” becomes “h4×0r”. Using this method it is possible to still choose a password that might be easy for you to remember, but writing it in a creative way using a variety of character types that will make it harder to guess or crack.

You can also take a phrase or sentence and boil it down to an acronym of sorts. For instance, you might find it easy to remember the phrase,“My birthday is on June 16.” However, instead of typing the whole thing, you could use “mbioj16” as your password or scramble it a bit more with alternative characters as discussed above so that it becomes something like “mbi0j16.”The net result is that you end up with a password that is more secure and harder to guess or break, but one that is easier for you to remember than just selecting a random grouping of various character types.

If you aren’t sure how to transpose the normal characters in a word to alternate characters that look similar, you can use a tool like L33t-5p34K G3n3r@t0r available from a number of sites if you simply search for it on Google.You can also visit www.transl8it.com, but the translations are not as consistently good as those created with L33t-5p34K G3n3r@t0r.

If you can’t come up with a good phrase or password on your own, you can use a tool like the Secure Password Generator on the winguides.com Web site www.winguides.com/security/password.php.The Secure Password Generator has check boxes to let you select the number of characters in your password, whether to use uppercase letters, numbers, or punctuation, and whether to allow a character to repeat.You can also tell it to create up to 50 passwords at one time and then select the one you prefer from the list in case you are concerned that winguides.com will know your password.