CS220AU

Password management

Some suggestions, from the Net:

don’t use

• words that can be found in dictionaries e.g. ‘Lemon’ or ‘love’
• simple passwords e.g. ‘12345’, ‘aaaaaa’ or ‘1234abcd’
• words that could be guessed from your social media profiles e.g. your dog’s name
• the same password on different websites e.g. on Facebook and Twitter
• context-specific words e.g. ‘instagram-ILOVEyou’ on Instagram
• physical notebooks to store your passwords, software or online folders

use

• at least eight characters (but ideally more)
• longer instead of more complex passwords e.g. correcthorsebatterystaple is better than Tr0ub4dor&3 (REF 1, 2)
• a good password manager app with a good password
• a mix of characters:
  • capital letters e.g. ‘C’ (not as the first letter in your password as it is too common)
  • lower case letters e.g. ‘w’
  • numbers e.g. ‘75’
  • symbols e.g. ‘<’, ‘+’, ‘>’

thoughts

• 2021 recommendation on Password Length & Complexity
• complex and long passwords which don’t use dictionary words are easy to forget
• a long password is still the best practice

idea 1 (phrase+)

• a long and similar password for different websites, let’s think:
  1. goingtouniisgreatfunin2022
  2. going2UniIZgreatfunin2022
  3. going2UniIZgreatfunin2022 + something from the website
• Facebook: going2UniIZgreatfunin2022kf
• Essex: going2UniIZgreatfunin2022kfxe

idea 2 (four random dictionary names)

correcthorsebatterystaple

• Facebook: correcthorsebatterystaple_kf
• Essex: correcthorsebatterystaple_xe

Test Passwords

• check howsecureismypassword.net
• review this site here
• always do some check with google before using something e.g. with keywords like ‘spam’, ‘scam’, ‘hack’

issues I had

• some website/apps need capitals and/or number and/or symbols, some prevent you to use them
• an idea is to not create many accounts