A few of my wife’s New Year’s resolutions are just about killing me. I’ve hidden all the sharp knives, blunt instruments and dry-cleaning bags, however, so I think I am going to be okay.
Her first resolution was to take a class at our local library about technology safety, like how to create hard-to-hack passwords. As soon as she got home, just for practice, she changed the code number on the garage door touchpad, and then she went shopping. I wrote this column on my cell phone, sitting in the car in front of our house. I hoped she wrote the new code down. I was freezing.
Apparently, there are computer scammers who gather your family names, addresses, pets, past jobs, etc., and then do millions of test-run combinations in microseconds. I was shocked to learn that dickwolfsiewishtv would be easy to crack. According to one tech website, hackers would be able to figure out that password in 11 seconds. If I worked for WTHR it would take 14 seconds. I’m not sure it’s worth the move.
“Well, do you have any upgraded security codes, Mary Ellen?”
“Yes. For our financial records I’m going to take the first letter of every boyfriend I ever dated, followed by the street address number of every house we’ve lived in. Then, I’ll increase each digit by ‘one’ so that 1450 becomes 2561. I’ll capitalize every other letter and then sprinkle these symbols throughout: %^&**#@.”
I thought the profanity was unnecessary, but according to that same website, it would take even the most crooked computer geek 11,000 years to uncover that code to gain access to our investment portfolio. With the savings in my 401K, we’ll be broke long before then, anyway.
I had another question: “Mary Ellen, how will you possibly remember a password like that? It’s very long and complicated.”
“I don’t have to remember it. I’ll write it down.”
“If you are going to have to look it up every time anyway, why not just pick a couple dozen totally random numbers and characters? Why make this so complicated with boyfriends and street addresses?”
“What a password pooper. You would not do well in my class.”
“Okay, Mary Ellen, so our new passwords cannot be guessed. Where are you going to hide this written list?”
“I don’t know. I think that’s the next class. And why would I tell you? You can’t keep a secret.”
“You’re right. A couple of martinis and I’ll be spouting off Kh^TbL1356R^7867%^&*#@ to every crook who will listen. By the way, your password is safe with me because even if I wanted to blab it out, I don’t know what this ^ is called.”
Yesterday, Mary Ellen went to the library because her instructor said that when you confirm passwords, it’s safer doing it from a remote location than on your home computer. The phone rang: “Dick, it’s Mary Ellen. I’m checking our bank account password. I need you to remind me of the old one.”
“I’m not going to tell you over the phone. Someone could be listening in on our conversation. And I’m not texting it. That’s just as dangerous.”
“Oh, lighten up, Dick. It’s not healthy to be that paranoid.”
