Potty time: safe and secure passwords

While most people will create passwords that are easy to recall, having a safe and secure password requires a lot from a person.

Character wise
A safe and secure password must use letters (a-z) in both cases (a-z and A-Z) alternately, numbers (0-9) and characters (@,$,%,&, etc) in one password alone. An example is abc@123. This is a 7 character password using alphanumeric (letters and numbers) characters and a special character.

Some may write their passwords as aBc@12E. In this example, a certain letter is capitalized to break the sequential pattern (i.e. a-b-c) and a number (3) is substituted for its alphabetical equivalent (3 = e).

Numbers and letters can be substituted for each other. Here is what I have so far: 1 = i, 3 = e, 4 = h, 0 = o.

Length wise
Long passwords are hard to crack. The longer the harder. I have seen people typing in about 12 characters using the QWERTY side of the keyboard along with the number row on top (with shift pressed) and the number pad at the right side. The password must look something like this "sg85@sgh89t8"

One can memorize all the characters. But at this time, we all have more than one account that requires a password. You have your email account (personal, office, business, and monkey-business), your blog account, your photo archive account (photobucket, flicker), internet bank account, and your online community account (friendster, facebook, yahoo! 360).

Well, you can use the same password in all your accounts. The only problem is if your password in one account is discovered all your other accounts are in danger.

Variety
You can vary you password pattern in different accounts. For accounts that you think may not be that important or that you can rebuild after it is ruined, just have a simple password that you can remember and someone else can guess.

For accounts that record you personal and financial assets, transactions, and communications, have a more complicated password for them.

If your account requires you to change the password regularly, try to come up with 3 different passwords that you can easily remember. You may write it down and keep it locked away. But committing it to memory is the safest way.

Connections
Most hackers or those who are plain troublemakers will want to find a connection between you and the password. If you deeply adore your a person or even just your cat, the hacker will just try using the cat's or person's name or nickname in different variations (alpahnumeric and special character combinations, forward, backwards, reversed segments) to access you account.

One way to avoid this problem but still retain a good chance of remembering the password is by connecting the password with someone or something that you used to know or have but is not in any way connected with you anymore.

An example will be a nickname you gave your toy when you were a child that nobody else outside your family knows about. Or the name or nickname of the person you used to plan in having a relationship then but did not bloom. Or the birthday of a person you have a crush with 10 years ago.

I hope this will help you make your accounts more secure. Happy computing!

Laptop Maintenance and Repair

Why is it that manufacturers of electronic equipment want clients to keep on purchasing new parts rather than go out of their way and remedy malfunctions through repair? I read from a website (I forgot the site address) that Elitegroup Computer Systems of Taiwan designed their laptops with so many hidden screws that it will discourage an owner from doing repairs himself. This is another vote for the one China policy. I was so pissed off that I told myself not to buy another Taiwan made product in the future.

About four months ago, my laptop croaked on me. Well, it actually beeped on me. I turned it on and it made three long beeps with no screen. This prompted me to visit the authorized repair center to have it checked even though it is four months beyond is warranty.

Three beeps from the BIOS of my ECS laptop means base memory error.

Before taking the laptop to the authorize technicians, I consulted our office technicians first. I was advised to try to remove the memory module, use a soft eraser to clean the gold contact, re-seat the module firmly and try it again. The beeping is still there.

Unfortunately, when I brought the laptop to the authorized service center, I was told the problem with the beeping sound can only be remedied by purchasing a new mainboard since the problem was not the memory module but the DIMM receptacle. A new mainboard or shipping the laptop to Taiwan for repairs will cost me half the price of the laptop.

Disappointed, I went home. There, I tried to open the laptop by myself. I did not have a digital camera at that time so I was not able to document it for you. Alas, I cannot solve the problem.

I turned to our office technicians for help and they obliged me. Sadly, they too cannot repair the mainboard.

A few days ago, I chanced upon an advertisement of a repair center. The ad says that they can repair mainboard problems that the machine's own authorized repair center cannot. They say that since the manufacturers of the laptop is a business establishment, they prefer the clients to buy at a larger sum rather than providing affordable repair solutions.

So I tried this one. I will find out soon enough if their batting average on repairs is good. :)