I attended a highly-stimulating tech startup conference in Quebec City yesterday and Friday. I’ll be posting some insights on Tuesday once I’ve had a chance to go through and digest my notes.
In the meantime, two questions: 1) When was the last time you changed your important passwords? 2) How are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions? If it’s been ages since you renewed your passwords and you’re starting to lose sight of those early-January good intentions, here’s a way to improve both situations.
How many times a day do you input your various passwords? Have you ever considered that, given the frequency with which we repeat them, passwords are a lot like silent mantras? What if, instead of using something random, you were to create a message for yourself and use it as your password? Or several messages for each of your key passwords?
Since good passwords avoid dictionary words, take the first letter of each word in a phrase that is something you need to remind yourself to be or do. For added security, include some numbers and punctuation marks (colon, exclamation mark, etc) and make some of it in uppercase letters if the password format allows it. The longer the phrase, the stronger the password.
Spend a few weeks with your new mantra(s), see if anything changes in your life and post a comment here.
I use strong passwords and I do change them every 30 days, but I never considered making it up using a mantra as you suggest.
I usually just type random characters, numbers, and punctuation marks and somehow remember it 🙂
They usually look like this:
g&s2!Sgm2dj4x
But then you need a good password database to handle all these mysterious chains. I too never use the same password and that I don’t even know any of the hundreds I regularly use. The app that makes it easy for me is AnyPassword (www.anypassword.com, for Windows PC only).
Don’t forget about banking ATM and voicemail PINs – these can’t be handled by a password manager and chances are that you use them every day…
For Mac users who want password management, there’s the Keychain Access utility that is included in OS X. I think its default location is in Applications > Utilities. While it doesn’t have a password expiration notification feature, it does have a password generator that you can also use to test the strength of your “passmantra”. Open Keychain Access, select New Password Item under the File menu, then click on the key icon in the new window that opens. A second window will open and you can type over the suggestion with your mantra to verify its quality.
Good idea Duncan.
I wonder how many people, after reading this post, will change their Bank 4 digits NIP for the following mantras:
FUCK
AIME
JOUE
RIRE
Or perhaps FAJR?
😉