We offer some advice on how to avoid disappointing Black Friday purchases. We talk about password security and how you can easily and dramatically increase the security of your online accounts and identity. And we take a listener call about cellular data plans.
Thanks Guys some good tips on password security there which prompted some thoughts, with most people having external hard or SSD drives should encryption of said hardware also be considered especially as they could be lost or stolen? Maybe a topic for a future cast…
I really liked your discussion on passwords. What frustrates me is that some places, such as my bank, have a maximum length that the password can be, which is only 12 characters, and they do not allow any punctuation or special characters. The best you can do is something like “WordWithCap5”, which does not rate all that strong.
I try to find a good mix of security and convenience. That’s why, for example, I set the password on my accounts and luggage to “12345”.
I talked my niece out of buying my nephew a $100 tablet at Wally Mart. Thanks, Modern Geek!
Her: “He wants an iPad, so…”
Me: “That’s like getting him a pair of Wally-Mart jeans and saying, ‘What? Pants are pants!’”
A while back I came across a technique for building strong cryptographic passwords
it goes something like this:
[ul]
[li]Take the x characters of a domain name (galactic)
[/li][li]split it in half (gala ctic)
[/li][li]swap (ctic gala)
[/li][li]throw in your initials capitalized and the 1’s digit of the year you were born: (ctic ABC4 gala)
[/li][/ul]
and there you go, a nice strong password.:
cticABC4gala
This is just an example of course. Varying the number of characters you take from a domain, which initials you use, how many digits from your birth year, etc. creates enough variation that your passwords are relatively strong and meet common requirements.
The downside to this method tends to be that if you don’t have the password in muscle memory, it can take a minute to work it out in your head, and you have to keep your pattern straight. The upside is that it requires no additional software.
You’d think that’s be a strong password but something like Razor Dog Rafter Plug is a lot stronger lol
I’m not sure this would qualify as a tremendous Black Friday deal, but yesterday the online Apple store had the only discounts I’ve ever seen from Apple on their latest merchandise. My family had already decided to buy my little sister an iPad 2 for Christmas so we were able to get one for $50 off normal price. I heard that Best Buy also had a similar iPad 2 deal. According to the website it was the only sale the online Apple store has all year (that isn’t clearance or refurbished stuff). iPads iTouches and Nanos were on sale. Shuffles, iPhones and Classics were not on sale. There were also some Apple deals on their computers but I don’t remember them because I wasn’t in the market for them and didn’t bother to look.
We will see if they repeat the price breaks for Cyber Monday.
~Shooter Out
It’s true, that cryptographically that’s a harder password to break, but a large variety of the sites that I use wouldn’t allow a password like that. It has no numbers, and as mentioned by Fanatic above, some sites won’t a allow a password that long. That’s the irony offered by the XKCD comic. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with these awkward passwords.
As a side note, I read “Razor Dog Rafter Plug” not as a password, but the name for some software. I started googling around and was like "What the heck is this guy talking about??)
My girlfriend bought a Macbook Pro and got $100 off.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, what is all this shopping madness? Can we start up a Cookie Wednesday or something, where cookies are half price? I want some Oreos.
What was the name of that password management tool you all talked about? I have slept since I listened to the podcast so naturally I have forgotten.
Thanks!
Thanks for the password bit, I use a few words with numbers substituted for letters as passwords. Important stuff tends to get it’s own individual password, but I never thought about password recovery emails in gmail. I’m gonna overhaul my online security thanks to you guys.
Between this and the backups podcasts, I have vastly improved how I do things at home.
I can not thank you guys enough.
Ok, I’ve been changing passwords all over the place and I have to rant for a second. Seems that lots of sites want you to be secure, but not TOO secure. Take Paypal for instance, it wouldn’t let me use “My money that lives in cyberspace.” because it wasn’t strong enough, but it was my kid’s first name and the year he was born before I changed it. Go figure.
I have to thank you guys again, because today I got an email from Ebay telling me my account was locked due to suspicious activity. I had to call them and talk to the security dept. I may have dodged a bullet because of you guys.
I now have LastPass and a yubikey on the way!
A few things from using LastPass.
I think using a password you can remember for email is important. If things go south, you might need to get to email without having your stored passwords handy.
A question though, how often should we change passwords? Either ones that are memorizable and ones that LastPass or my cat generate?
Just installed Last Pass, very easy to use (yes make sure you can remember the main password and it’s a good 'un) and yeah the ability of the service to work across the desktop and laptop makes life so much easier. I do now feel a lot more comfortable using more varied passwords, yes my recall wouldn’t let me get too creative across the dozens of sites that require logins:)
Hey Guys,
I switched over to LastPass after being hesitant about abandoning my passwords to a third party system. After using it for a few days, I’m thrilled I switched. It’s super easy. Thanks for the recommendation.