Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Damned Passwords

Look, I dont care what the 'security gurus' say, for the past few years I have been quite happily using the names of my immediate family as passwords. After all, I have to remember about a hundred passwords, whereas I have less than half that number of children, and I can remember all their names.

Last time I tried to change a password I was informed that:

1) Passwords must be a minimum of 8 characters in length
2) They must contain both upper and lower case letters
3) They must contain at least one digit, and one or more of the following special characters (-$#@%*)

So, I've given this some considerable thought, and I have a solution. When I get home from my current business trip to the moon, I am going to suggest to my wife that we change the kid's names to R2D2-kid1 and C3PO-kid2. Snappy, eh?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not the fact that a password must be something like C3PO-kid2 which gets me. It's the restriction that the password can only last three months, must not be the same as the previous password and in some cases the password before that. How on earth do system administrators expected us remember which is the current password, instead of an old password? Well, I have a simple solution. Write the current password on a post-it note and place in on the edge of my monitor. Secure huh?

The Grumbler said...

Ah, well, you see, this is how I can justify having so many children...

Tengrain said...

Your solution, Grumbler, is both elegant and instructive.

I'm assuming of course that when the password expires, so does the kid? Or am I being hopeful?

Regards,

Tengrain

The Grumbler said...

Tengrain, how unkind of you to suggest that my kids might expire. If my wife heard you suggest that, she'd probably set our Sn1ff-butt (our dog) on you. Have a care old friend!

Tengrain said...

I like children, but I usually order the plate of the day, Grumbler.

Best regards,

Tengrain