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It's one of the most common internet security questions yet birth certificates, Uncle's phone calls, your family can make this easily available. So instead, do what I do. Use a consistent, fake name that only you know.
Secondly, do be very, very careful about passwords. Sadly people often use the same password for lots of sites including their online financial sites.
Let me ask you a question. Is your password the same for this site as it is for online banking and credit cards? If it is, and I was unscrupulous (don't worry I'm not) I've now got your user name (same one for elsewhere?) and password......
And some sites would have an email, address, user name, and password..... it wouldn't be that difficult.
Be careful. Rotate passwords, or at the very least use a different password for financial and non-financial sites.
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It's also a good idea to include upper case and lower case letters, numbers and punctuation marks in your password, for example
NamE;845!
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There was a thread along these lines a couple of weeks ago. See
TOG
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You can test the strength of passwords and it gives some tips
(though personally I wouldn't be giving my actual passwords to an unkown unsecure site - just test similar ones)
Techinically they say you should have a different password and username for every site you register for - but that's a heck of a lot of work
I use levels - a low-level username and password that I give to lots of sites don't care much if it is compromised
A mid-level password and username that might be very inconvenient if was found out
And all my financial stuff is seperate usernames and passwords
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I use levels - a low-level username and password that I give to lots of sites don't care much if it is compromised
A mid-level password and username that might be very inconvenient if was found out
And all my financial stuff is seperate usernames and passwords
I do exactly the same. Even so I must have at least a dozen passwords and half a dozen PINs that I use on a regular basis, and pretty much all the passwords are cryptic in some way...at the moment I don't have them written down and I can remember them all but I'm not looking forward to the day when I completely forget....it would be inconvenient to say the least.
Actually if you're interested, on this subject, there are some people in my department at university who are doing a survey about how people do or don't choose effective passwords as part of some computer security research - if you want to help you can fill this out:
(it's completely anonymous).
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You can test the strength of passwords and it gives some tips...
Hmm - all the other advice you gave is great, but this site's not that good for beginners to test how good their password is, in my opinion. I put in six random letters (i.e. chance of less than one in 300 million) and it give quite a poor rating for the password. Put in one of my email addresses, and it maxed out as a brilliant password.
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Hmm - all the other advice you gave is great, but this site's not that good for beginners to test how good their password is, in my opinion. I put in six random letters (i.e. chance of less than one in 300 million) and it give quite a poor rating for the password. Put in one of my email addresses, and it maxed out as a brilliant password.
fair point.
You would expect them to remove @ as a good special character and even warn you that giving your email address as a password is a bad idea
Welcome to the site
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If you use Roboform
You not only be able to remember your passwords but it has a builtin password generator which can save both upper and lower case combination, you can also increase the length of password thus making even more difficult to recall, but passwords are saved and you can make them secure.
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Used to work in a call centre and it is amazing how many Asian people have the same mothers maiden name - something to do with their name before they get married.
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There was an occasion when the bank refused to talk to my mother about a transaction between our accounts then explained that for security reasons they needed to ask me her maiden name and my date of birth; she could have told you that I said
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Korean common surname - "Kim"
Chinese common surname - "Lee"
what's other countries common surname???
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My telephone company uses mother's maiden name as the security question. The problem is when I became power of attorney for my mum. They asked me "What is your mother's maiden name?". Of course, the answer I gave was wrong!
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So, reading this thread has made me realise it would be wise to change some passwords........but I can't really change my mother's maiden name with existing "users" of that info - eg my bank, can I?
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It is difficult to comment on the security protocols of financial intitutions without giving the of game away. A rotating question is often employed. You don't have to stick with the same username for unrelalated accounts . Some variation with the username is likely to provide additional security in my view.
J_B.
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A good way to generate obscure, difficult to guess passwords that you can still remember is to think of a memorable phrase and then use the initial letter of each word in the phrase as the password. Generally for banks you need 6 - 8 characters and sometimes involving a number so use 6 - 8 words and quote the number literally e.g the phrase:
My 2 Dogs Said Banks Are Thieving Gits
then your password is:
M2DSBATG
You can easily vary this system to generate an easy to remember password that is different for each financial institution by involving the name of the institution e.g. for your current account with HSBC use:
My 2 Dogs Said HSBC Are Thieving Gits
M2DSHATG
For your savings account with Egg use:
My 2 Dogs Said Egg Are Thieving Gits
M2DSEATG
As someone said on the other thread, if you really can't remember passwords then try Password Safe:
This is a program that stores all your passwords in a file that is kept encrypted on your computer. You then use a single password to protect the lot and hence only have one to remember. The program was designed by Bruce Schneier who is a very well respected person in computer security and you can have some faith he knows what he's doing.
Bonzer
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From personal experience I no longer use my mothers maiden name as a password. When American Express called my home, my mum answered the phone, pretended to be me and gave them her maiden name, needless to say I was not impressed at all especially as AMEX were demanding money from me when I had cancelled my card over a year before because I had never used it After several severe conversations with not only my mum but also with AMEX about data protection act etc I only managed to get an appology off of my mum and 18 months later, although they did say that it was a problem with their computer, I am still waiting for AMEX to appologise and stop sending me statements for a card which I haven't had in nearly 2 years.
So I really do suggest that you don't use a family members name for a password especially if they can be mistaken to be you!
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One tip I was given was to take a favourite place name and spell it backwards. ie: Wales would be selaw.
In today's world it's passwords and pin numbers all the flipping time - wouldn't have been a problem for me 10yrs ago, but the ole grey matter isn't 'mattering' as much as it should do or used to and certainly doesn't matter enough to be able to remember all the different things I keep telling it *does* matter!!!!
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One tip I was given was to take a favourite place name and spell it backwards. ie: Wales would be selaw.
In today's world it's passwords and pin numbers all the flipping time - wouldn't have been a problem for me 10yrs ago, but the ole grey matter isn't 'mattering' as much as it should do or used to and certainly doesn't matter enough to be able to remember all the different things I keep telling it *does* matter!!!!
LOL
I'm with you on this one