Passwords
Most digital systems that have any form of security today require a username (often easily guessed) and a password. In the interest of keeping your accounts and computers secure, you need to protect them with strong passwords (see the Wikipedia entry for more info.)
Passwords are necessarily a compromise between ease of use and security. Go Dodgers is easy for you to remember, and easy for someone else to guess/hack. jf*57bn^13347/#@(}}!q is more difficult to hack, but probably not a reasonable password for most people.
Your best bet is to look at the Examples that follow guidelines listed in the Wikipedia entry above. My own password for a few years was 1966vwt3var1584, and then for awhile I used Gc1v1ItbGcthate, both of which were easy for me to remember but virtually impossible to guess. Can you figure out what they're related to, or how I remembered them?
It may be useful for you to consider having three different levels of passwords:
- a low-level password that is used for sites or circumstances that don't require any security: 2479 might work.
- a medium-level password that is used for sites or circumstances that requires a bit more security. If you want to make the password even more secure, customize it for each site by including part of the site name in the password. amar50n19w60zon might be my password for the Amazon.com website. Easy for me to remember—those are my initials there, interspersed with my current age and the year I was born—but pretty unreasonable for most people to hack.
- a high-level password that is used for information that must be secure: your bank account login, your personal server, etc. This password, too, should be customized for each individual application.
In this course, you will have access to a number of machines, both local and networked. It is your responsibility to use strong passwords for your accounts on those machines, and to protect those passwords by not sharing them with others.
If you think that someone getting access to your Facebook account or your laptop is not a big deal, read Twitter gets hacked, or this.
Hacked passwords aren't the only threat out there--you can still find yourself in trouble if you click the wrong link in a spam email or website. Even the mighty Google is vulnerable.
But strong passwords are a good place to start.
Use them.