We’ve all been through this: creating or changing a password. With all those recent password leaks that made the mainstream media headlines, people are invited to change their passwords. But have you been trying to do it? Is it hard creating password?
For the braves …
For those who were brave enough (or serious enough about protecting their online data), the chances are that they’ve been through that same set of automatic password criteria evaluation. Remember sentences like the following?
- Your password needs to be at least eight characters long
- Your password should contain at least a number
- Your password should at least include one upper case letter
- You can’t reuse a password
… and the list goes on.
Most of the times, that same website had made you thinking of that great password, and even though it asks you to enter it twice, the chances are that you’ll forget that awesome-uncrackable password the next time you need to login to that same website. Raise your hands if you already encountered that issue? I did.
The nice password validation process
Next time you come back to that same website (assuming that you are smart enough not to check the “keep me logged in” feature on some websites), chances are that you’ll click on that “reset your password” link. And guess what? You’ll have to go again through all the password validation process to get another awesome-uncrackable password. Then you start thinking of writing it down somewhere – which is a terrible idea, and some websites even have the courtesy of reminding you that you shouldn’t write it down.
So, you’ve watched that funny video. Have you seen how creative that Gal could be finding some variations on a topic that she loves: dogs? I especially like the portion about the “You cannot use passwords that have been used in the last six months.”
Have you noticed the trick she is using?
She increases some numbers, hoping this will do it. We’ve all used that trick, I’m sure. And that “palindrome” criteria are just plain crazy. I had to check on my dictionary to find the right meaning of “palindrome”- and I do admit it takes some imagination to find some palindromes – then trying to apply it to a password is just way out of most people’s mind.
Indeed, the times where you could just put your birthday as a password are way behind us (at least for serious online platforms). I wouldn’t be surprised that at some point of time, not only would websites increase the difficulty for generating passwords, but they will also ask you to enter some Captcha to make sure there’s no robot out there trying to crack user’s password.
Anyway, while this sketch is “a bit” out of reality, there’s a lot of actual issues that are raised in it. But I can’t help mentioning the irony of the sketch when it shows she did all of this for what? For being able to vote for the cutest puppy, and then for the cutest horse? Come on. Who needs a password for that?
Your two cents: do you find it hard creating a password?
P.S: I kind of like the look that girl on the video has with her big glasses, don’t you? 🙂