This week’s blogs is coming to you in honor of last weeks’
Consumer Privacy Awareness Week; May 3- 9, 2015.
I made a promise last week to myself, that I’d start
selecting stronger passwords. This came about due to me being remote and not
having my trusty cheat sheet of passwords handy, and you guessed it, I locked
myself out of my Laptop. While getting unlocked, the topic of password security
came up.
“What do you want your new password to be,” my IT person
asked? My response was, “The same as all my other passwords.” The long pause
should have been an indicator of what was soon to follow.
Yes, I shamefully acknowledge that I DID have a password
cheat sheet, past tense because I shredded it once I got in today, and yes that
was also part of the promise too. Fine, I admit that I HAD, from time to time
to used my pet’s name, current address, favorite color, and even the word
PASSWORD, all things easily remembered with minimal effort. In fact I’ll also
admit that I used to only select difficult aka not easily remembered words when
I was forced to. But I don’t think I’m alone.
I firmly believe we’ll choose weak passwords that can be
easily guessed or cracked. These passwords are YES, easily remembered by us but
can be easily guessed by anyone that knows you, or has access to your social
media. Great examples are the passwords I had chosen in the past. My
belief was validated in a recently released report by IBM that stated,
"123456" and "password" are still the two most common
passwords found on the Internet. Thankfully most financial institutions require
online banking passwords to be stronger than that, as well as, out of wallet
identification factors, but is that the same for the password to your PC or
email?
If my bad password habits sound similar to your password
style; will you promise me that you too will start to make them stronger?
If you’re interested; the FTC’s A friendly reminder post is what I used to help
start securing my passwords.