Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Re-Using Passwords

This comic from xkcd.com does a great job illustrating the danger of password reuse.  This is the most common way accounts get hacked these days.  So if you've ever discovered that your email account has been sending out messages about how you "made thousands of dollars working from home!" you've probably fallen for one of these schemes. Some solutions to this problem after the jump.

Note: Password entropy means how RANDOM your password is, or how unlikely it is to be guessed.


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Possible solutions:
  1. Get really good at memorizing lots of different passwords. 
  2. Rely on the web services you use to know when they've been hacked and inform you.  Banks and popular services like Facebook and Google have gotten pretty good at this, and they'll tell you to change your password when it happens.
  3. Use a password keeper.  This is a piece of software that saves all of your passwords and lets you retrieve them with only a single password.  Most importantly, they generate random passwords that are very hard to break into, and are completely unique.  The good ones work on Mac, PC, and smartphones, and sync the data so that you're never without your passwords.  Some others work entirely online.  This article gives a rundown of the best ones.  Here are a few:
Be safe, folks!


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