PASSWORDS!@#$%^&*()

I don’t know about you, but passwords tend to drive me crazy!

There are so many rules for creating a password and also rules for remembering them. They say don’t write them down anywhere, but how are you to remember them otherwise?

I was introduced to the wonderful world of secure passwords many years ago at the school district where I worked. I was told to think of a sentence that I could remember and use the first letter of each word in the sentence as my password. That worked well until I had to update and change my password on a regular basis. I needed to come up with more sentences. AGHHHHHHHH!!!! Let me tell you that teachers have enough to try to remember without adding more pressure with constantly changing passwords. I was getting to the point where I had to use sentences like, “Henry brought a spider to school in May.”

Fast forward to now. I need passwords for my bank account (plus pins), email accounts, social media accounts, shopping accounts, retirement accounts, medical accounts, travel accounts, accounts for my writing, business accounts, this account, and that account. Then I have to keep up with changing my passwords.

Rules for passwords are: 1. You should not use a password that is used for another account, 2. It needs to be a strong password, and 3. It needs to be at least a certain length and use capital letters, small case letters, numbers, and symbols. Or not use all of these.

One of my email accounts was hacked into a couple of weeks ago. It took me a couple of hours to get it back and change the password. Whoever hacked it had also changed the security question to one in Spanish. Life on the internet is crazy!

They also say that you should never log into any account using a public wifi. They say limit your internet usage on a public network to only news and weather. I also heard a news report that using public ports to charge your phone (for example, at the airport) may cause your phone to be compromised. It’s called “juice jacking.” If you really need to tweet, check social media accounts, or email, and your phone battery is low, you should use your own usb charger.

Technology is great, but it does have a lot of drawbacks. Security issues, it seems, will always be with us. I wish the people who are trying to hack into people’s lives and technology would just go get an honest job.

That reminds me, I need to change a couple of passwords. Happy passwording! I wonder if this sentence, “I’m scared the Hershey Kisses will blow away,” would make a good password. (That’s another story.)