{"id":2231,"date":"2007-01-28T21:44:15","date_gmt":"2007-01-29T01:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blg\/2007\/01\/28\/passwords-are-mantras\/"},"modified":"2023-09-07T04:56:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T09:56:48","slug":"passwords-are-mantras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/28\/passwords-are-mantras\/","title":{"rendered":"Passwords are mantras"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I attended a highly-stimulating <a href=\"http:\/\/startup-canada.com\/\">tech startup conference<\/a> in Quebec City yesterday and Friday. I&#8217;ll be posting some insights on Tuesday once I&#8217;ve had a chance to go through and digest my notes. <\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s resolutions? If it&#8217;s been ages since you renewed your passwords and you&#8217;re starting to lose sight of those early-January good intentions, here&#8217;s a way to improve both situations. <\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mantra\">mantras<\/a>? 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?<\/p>\n<p>Since <a href=\"http:\/\/wolfram.org\/writing\/howto\/password.html\">good passwords<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>Spend a few weeks with your new mantra(s), see if anything changes in your life and post a comment here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I attended a highly-stimulating tech startup conference in Quebec City yesterday and Friday. I&#8217;ll be posting some insights on Tuesday once I&#8217;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&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/28\/passwords-are-mantras\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Passwords are mantras<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8671,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2231\/revisions\/8671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcturgeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}