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One of the hactivist groups that have attacked some large organizations to point out how weak their security measures are have apparently hit an unnamed writers' group and published all 62,000 user names and passwords they gleaned from the site. PC Pro Magazine did an analysis of the passwords that writers chose. Other than some common words like 'mystery,' 'reader' and 'romance', they were much like others: the most common password was '123456' (568 times). Another common one is 'password'.
So...got a lame password? Use it at all your other web sites, too, making it easy to whack you multiple times. Just sayin'....
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Years ago, I co-wrote a document for civil servants of a particular Federal Government branch. The document, by the way, was essentially ignored. Apparently, they thought it was one of my fictional stories...
Without looking at the database, I picked at random a dozen Fed employees that I had regular contact with, and profiled them in order to figure out their password. I was perfectly accurate on four out of the twelve, and missed two others by one or two characters. I mentioned to those who needed to hear this that my percentage should have been a big fat zero. I think that was ignored, too.
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I used the same password for years until I started playing an online video game that is notorious for having accounts hacked. I actually didn't take many of the security measures my friends did, but every time I had a scare where I was DCed for no reason I'd change my password.
Oddly enough I never got hacked, although a large percentage of my friends did at one point or another. I credit this to using a Mac while they all used Windows machines (apparently Macs are much more secure against malware).
But yes, secure passwords are very important. Although these days ne'er do wells don't even need to guess anymore, since keyloggers and other malware is so prevalent and allows them to simply pluck it off your computer when you use it.
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I usually use names of my story characters. Since I invented them I doubt anyone will think of them, at least not until I publish those stories.
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posted
Way back when I started going online, I started out by pulling a made-up name from an old story...at this point, nobody knows it but me.
Later on, though, I tended to grab whatever text happened to be on hand nearby my comptuer, and improvise a password from that---then I write it down.
(Even then, I've lost some of the lists and notes and have to get the password from the "forget your password" link. This site dies on me every year and I can never remember what I used.)
Of course, last week, when I installed that router, I came full circle, and renamed it with another made-up name from another old story---of course, just the name of it. The password was another random collection of letters and numbers.
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