The same question could be phrased “why do we need locks on the doors of our house?” or “Why do we need locks on our cars?”
If some one fails to see the need for locks then have them remove the locks from their home and car.
Quickly the need will be self evident, all though costly.
In this computer age we need security and passwords are that lock to keep the outsiders out side!
Weak or substandard locks are worthless. Would you lock the front door of your house with a luggage lock?
The best they can do to a malicious person is be a nuisance. They will not hinder or stop him.
They are better than nothing right?
Low hanging fruit are always the first fruit taken from a tree. But once they are all gone then more effort is required to get the rest of the fruit. So it is with those with with no passwords at all and those with weak passwords. Those with weak passwords aren’t the first to be taken but they are definitely next!
Your computer has about 256 entry points called ports which are like doors and it takes less than three seconds to knock on all the doors looking for a response from the computer of “user name and password”.
Once there is a response then what is used is a dictionary attack where every word in the dictionary is used. This can be done in minutes. Next is the hackers list of most commonly used passwords. Comments on this list can be found at http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/120554
while the list itself can be found at
What is a strong password?
It should be at least 8 characters long with a mixture of numbers and letters with one or two special characters.
No, swordfish will not do. 🙂
So how do you remember a password that has number and letters with special characters?
For me special characters mean either at home or at work or at some other location. For instance the special character “$” would be for my computer at work. Then if I am opening a Windows OS then I just use the first four characters of Windows and it would be $Wind. Now interweave the last four digits of your personal phone number at work or your employee ID into it or any other familiar numeric string. Like this $W4i2n4d9. What if you were logging into your Quick books at work? What should the password be? $Q4u2i4c9k. When I am at home the stars are out. Guess what special symbol I use at home? Right, the “*” special character. So logging on to my home computer which has Windows it would be merged with a numeric string at home, perhaps the last four of the home phone *W9i7n5d5.
This method makes for stonewall passwords! What is even better they are easy to remember! (well almost 🙂 )
Remember it is not a person that is attacking your computer but a program that is written so that one program can be at thousands of places at one time, knocking on your or other’s computer’s or router’s doors.
Should you share your passwords with anyone? Maybe one; Groucho Marx! 🙂
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