Rant 225 12/8/12 Subject: Passwords

Rant number 225

Information is key. Information is king. Information is power. It's a possession that everyone has, no matter whether they are the lowliest peasant, or the wealthiest king in his ivory tower.

And whether or not you believe, understand or concede it, your information is worth something to someone else other than yourself.

This means you must protect what is yours with all the tools at your disposal.

Now, if you wanted to protect something precious, the first thing you would probably do would be to lock it away somewhere safe and secure, behind a complicated lock, then post guards with very big guns in front of it and then put it in a high tower - behind a moat for good measure.

Or at the least - you know, put it in a bank or something.

This is a natural reaction to something precious - but we don't protect our information in the same way.

Which brings me onto passwords.

I have quite a few things to protect by password:
My Hotmail e-mails
Ebay
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon
Play
Paypal
This blog
The website I look after

You get the idea.
This means that I have at least 11 passwords to remember at one time, which is quite a lot you will agree.

As such, for convenience and because of my appalling memory - I have no choice but to reuse some of the passwords more than once - and the thing is, I shouldn't.

It's too easy to get blasé attitude about something so precious and it really is something we should all think about more. Keeping your info safe should be the same as locking your doors and checking the windows before you go out.

As well as identifying our own problems however, maybe it's time that we came up with an alternative to passwords.

Something more full proof would be better. A computer algorithm or an injected chip or something. It just strikes me as a better way of doing things.

And not just a half hearted finger print system like I have seen recently - which merely inputs the same kind of passwords automatically at the touch of a finger.

That just doesn't solve any problems, it just creates more.

Anyway, preaching done.

Rant over.