{"id":95,"date":"2013-05-21T11:38:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T15:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/?p=95"},"modified":"2013-05-21T11:38:10","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T15:38:10","slug":"please-dont-make-me-change-my-password-its-the-one-i-use-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/2013\/05\/21\/please-dont-make-me-change-my-password-its-the-one-i-use-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Please don&#8217;t make me change my password.  It&#8217;s the one I use everywhere."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Passwords serve to protect our privacy, our financial well-being, our reputations and even our identities. \u00a0Often, a password is all that stands between us and catastrophe.<\/p>\n<p><i>Choosing a password:<\/i> A good password is easy to remember, hard to guess or crack, and for UVM accounts, changed at least once a year (every 120 days for College of Medicine accounts). \u00a0Here are some ideas for picking a password:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use the first letters of the first 8+ words to a song, poem, or passage from a book<\/li>\n<li>Use the first letters, numbers, and symbols from a phrase you make up<\/li>\n<li>Make up a nonsense phrase, even one that contains dictionary words, as long as you use 3 or 4 words and punctuation<\/li>\n<li>Use a password generator [1]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i>Different passwords everywhere:<\/i> Using the same password for everything?\u00a0 You shouldn\u2019t. One password means that a single key unlocks your entire kingdom. Keep your passwords different and never re-use your UVM credentials for outside accounts. Instead, come up with a password formula known only to you that helps you keep your password unique yet easy to remember.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft [2] offers\u00a0this sensible advice: &#8220;Don&#8217;t use the same password for everything.\u00a0Cybercriminals steal passwords on websites that have very little\u00a0security, and then they use\u00a0that same password and user name in more\u00a0secure environments, such as banking websites.&#8221; \u00a0You&#8217;ve probably seen news reports of sites like Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Twitter being compromised and passwords stolen; it happens both to major sites and to many smaller ones we never see in the news. \u00a0If we don&#8217;t use different passwords, we expose ourselves \u2014 and those whose sensitive information we have access to \u2014 to significant risk.<\/p>\n<p>Securing the Human [3] and Lifehacker [4] are good sources for ideas about choosing and managing passwords.<\/p>\n<p>[1]\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/preshing.com\/20110811\/xkcd-password-generator\">http:\/\/preshing.com\/20110811\/xkcd-password-generator<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[2]\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/security\/online-privacy\/passwords-create.aspx\">http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/security\/online-privacy\/passwords-create.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[3]\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.securingthehuman.org\/newsletters\/ouch\/issues\/OUCH-201105_en.pdf\">http:\/\/www.securingthehuman.org\/newsletters\/ouch\/issues\/OUCH-201105_en.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[4]\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/5830355\/xkcd-password-generator-creates-high+security-easy+to+remember-passwords\">http:\/\/lifehacker.com\/5830355\/xkcd-password-generator-creates-high+security-easy+to+remember-passwords<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Passwords serve to protect our privacy, our financial well-being, our reputations and even our identities. \u00a0Often, a password is all that stands between us and catastrophe. Choosing a password: A good password is easy to remember, hard to guess or crack, and for UVM accounts, changed at least once a year (every 120 days for &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/2013\/05\/21\/please-dont-make-me-change-my-password-its-the-one-i-use-everywhere\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Please don&#8217;t make me change my password.  It&#8217;s the one I use everywhere.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":252,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Dean","author_link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/author\/djw\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/252"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/whysecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}