In case you missed it, like I did, yesterday was “Change Your Password Day.”
Another crazy day designed to remind us to do “something.”
Anything to waste more time.
If you’re like me, if you actually went through all the websites you have passwords for, it would take a little more than a day to change them all.
So why bother?
I tend to have the same password for everything. Six letters and numbers that have been with me forever and have little to no meaning.
Where I really get messed up are those sites that require a minimum of eight characters, including one capital letter, one number and one symbol.
Really?
I have one bank account that is perfectly fine with my standard six characters. I have another account with the same bank that requires a password that I couldn’t remember if I tried. If my simple password is good for one account, why not the other?
I have one of those programs on my laptop that remembers my passwords, but it doesn’t run on my iPad or iPhone, so what good is it?
Looking through that program I see 1,272 websites that passwords are saved for. Some I remember creating passwords for, others like “Latvian Women of the Net” I won’t claim ownership of.
While I do have a remarkable memory, even without Ginkgo Biloba, there are times when I find myself being held captive for forgetting a password. I can only imagine this is going to become more frequent as website operators attempt to beef up security by requiring users to create more complex passwords.
In the mean time, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that my 10 year old, six character password and eight character alternate don’t get discovered by some scallywag who wants to put sinister posts on my Facebook wall.
If that same scallywag wants to renew my subscription to that Latvian Women site… go ahead.
Just use a credit card number you stole from someone else who used a weak password on their bank account.