Why You Should Update Your Software (and How to Make It Painless)

Frank Bravo 0:07
Hi, I'm Frank Rother. Welcome to your Tech Makeover, the podcast that gives you tips and tricks to help you simplify and get more out of the technology in your life. Today we're talking about passwords. So this is a really big topic, and I'd like to break it up into two separate podcasts. So in this episode we're going to talk about what makes a good password. In part two I'm going to talk about password management and how to keep your password secure. I also should mention before I get started, that none of the examples in this podcast are passwords that I actually use. So don't go trying to break into my accounts. So what makes a good password? In our digital age, there's a little more that is important than choosing really good passwords to protect your information and to protect your information properly, there needs to be multiple passwords and they need to become Plex. The first password I ever remember receiving was my bank ATM. It consisted of four numbers. Yeah, just four numbers. I thought it was a pretty good password because I had a hard time remembering it. But gone are the days of four digit passwords. Now the requirements are at least eight or 10 or 12 or even more characters, some of them needing at least one uppercase, one lowercase, a number, some special characters. And you know, if it was just one password that we had to memorize, maybe we could deal with that. But chances are you're going to need more than just one. Recently, I helped a client go through a password upgrade. This is where we increase the complexity of their passwords from six characters to at least 12. You can imagine the users were not thrilled about this, but during this process, I talked a lot about what makes a good password and that good passwords don't have to be long or complex or hard to remember. It just doesn't have to be that way. As I mentioned earlier in the second episode about passwords, I'll talk more about secure password managers to help reduce the needs for having to remember those passwords. But even without a piece of software, there are some tricks that you can use to create good passwords that are also pretty easy to remember. As a general rule, you should never write down passwords. Now, that may not always be possible, but at the very least, you shouldn't write them down and put them on a post-it note and attach it to the side of your monitor. Believe me, I see that all the time, and you shouldn't use something like a Google doc or other insecure online document to store them. Man, do I have a story for you about that. I'm going to say that for another episode. One trick for a good secure password that is easy to remember is to use the first letter of a phrase. For example, my very educated mother just showed us nine planets since I was a grade schooler. I've remembered this phrase as the order of the planets from the first character of each word as the planet name Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Well, that was when Pluto was a planet. Is it a planet? Hard to know. Anyway, to make a password out of that. MVEMJSU. The number £0.09 and a period that makes at least one of those characters uppercase. And that's a good ten character password. It's a good idea to use different passwords for different sites, especially financial sites and your email accounts. Almost all of the more than 1300 passwords I manage for myself, the company I work for, and my clients are basically unique. Yeah, 1300 passwords. Can you imagine trying to remember all those? As I'll talk about next time? I hardly know any of those passwords by heart, but there are several that I do. For instance, the ones I remember like my email password, which I have to enter pretty often. I started using actual phrase phrases are great for passwords because they are long, complex, and usually pretty easy to remember. For example, if I wanted to create a good password for a Gmail, the email program that I use, I may use something like for Google Mail, exclamation mark. While that doesn't have a number in it, although I could have used the number four instead of four and zeros for the O's, it's a pretty good password and pretty hard to remember, especially if you use capital letters, numbers, spaces, and so on. Plus, I have an easy time to remember it because it would be for my Google mail. Again, not a password. I actually use some passwords you should never use. Well, you know these, right? It's your name, your spouse's name, your pet's name, your kid's name. You get the idea. Also, you should stay away from common passwords like sequential numbers. And of course, the word password. Still on the top ten list. Believe it or not, there are sites online where you can enter your passwords and see how secure they are. If you're interested in some of those, check out the website or the Facebook post about this episode. So, do you have a good passwords? Let me know how you're doing with your passwords. And as always, if you have ideas for topics you'd like me to cover, please feel free to contact me via email at Frank at your technique. Overcome. Keep an eye out for the second part of this podcast about passwords. When we talk about password managers. Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for listening to your tech makeover. If you haven't already, make sure you follow the Facebook page at facebook.com. Makeover. That's where I'll break down this and other episodes. And like I said, include some links about passwords. And before I go, I wanted to remind you to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss an episode. You can also check out your tech makeover, where all the episodes are there, and you can listen online. If you want to find out more about me, please visit Bravo ITC. Com. Until next time, I'm Frank Bravo and this has been your tech makeover.