How Safe is Your Password?

We often get reminders about password security such as,  "Don't share your password with anyone," or, "Don't use the same password for all your accounts." Even though we may feel these are too much work we really should be heeding the warnings. My recent newsfeed from the Common Sense Media people included an updated reminder about secure passwords. It contains a reminder of four things to remember when trying to create a foolproof password:
                                                    (provided by Microsoft's Safety and Security Center)

• length (at least 8 characters long)
• complexity (not just letters and numbers)
• variation (changing the password often)
• variety (Don't use the same password for everything. Have you heard this before?)

In addition there are links to interesting background stories, humorous takes on the struggle to create secure passwords, sites for help in both creating good passwords and managing your passwords.

If you're like me you have a multitude of accounts of various types and attempting to have a multitude of safe passwords is mind-boggling at best. For some very interesting suggestions and just some fun reading check out the "rest of the story" at the links below.

How Safe is Your Password? - from Common Sense Educators

sublinks in the above article
     (in case something looks interesting and you don't have time to check out the entire article):
          Young, in Love and Sharing Everything, Including a Password - from the New York Times
          PIN analysis - from the DataGenetics blog
          How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords - from lifehacker.com
          If you're using 'Password1,' change it. Now. - from CNN Money
          Password Strength - from the webcomic xkcd
          xkcd Password Generator - from preshing on programming
          The Usability of Passwords - more on multi-word passwords from Thomas Baekdal
          Why Multi-word Phrases Make for More Secure Passwords Than Incomprehensible Gibberish
                     - a post to lifehacker.com by Adam Dachis  
          How Secure Is My Password? - site for, you guessed it, checking out your password

A note to teachers: check the Teaching Tools tab for some lessons from Common Sense Media on passwords.