Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for May 11, 2024

As you get older, things get weaker…..

sigh

My strong passwords lock me out.

Why is “beefstew” an unsafe password to use?

Because it’s not Stroganoff.

Changed all my passwords to Kenny.

Now all I have are Kenny Loggins.

My wifi password is the cat’s birthday month.

Feb-paw-hairy.

So I typed in my new password ‘Chicken’

Was not allowed and it must contain a capital.

‘chickenkiev’

In an attempt to deter computer hackers I’ve changed all my passwords to ‘Brazil Nut’

That will be a hard one to crack.

My Google password is “SnowWhite&the7dwarves”.

Because it said I needed at least 8 characters, including caps, a number and a symbol.

I set the comp password to ‘Homework1st’. My daughter was getting frustrated that every time she asked what I changed it to, I answered. She did every piece of work, including corrections. Then I wrote it down.

Gives me an idea for an easy pissword4@OldfART.

Only one thing I dislike more than passwords – the nosy, greedy people that make them necessary

“weak” is too short and needs some caps and numbers and other stuff.

When asked to change my account name I filled in the first angry thought that came to my mind.

You leave my passwords alone!

Several years ago, Randall Munro (xkcd webcomic) pointed out that those numbers, capitals and “special” characters don’t do anything to make passwords harder for machines to guess, just harder for people to remember. He suggested instead making passwords from randomly chosen words (easy for you to remember) that add up to a lot of characters (lots of entropy, hard for computers to guess). For example, “CorrectHorseBatteryStaple.”

In one of those things that never happens, our IT guy actually read this strip and the reasoning behind it, removed all the caps/numbers/special requirements and said “just make it nice and long.” He even linked to the xkcd comic.

So how many hundred people now are using “weak” as their password because they have been told that that is what it is?

You need to write down the passwords, put them in a small safe.. and be sure not to lose the key, and the spare key. Unless it has a combination lock, in which case you write down the combination and… oh… hmmm.

I keep my passwords in a “little black book” that I bought years ago when they were still a thing.