I Don’t Like The Word “Password” Anymore

It’s a simple word, “password”.

This word will be around forever, it’s ingrained in people’s minds everywhere, as the term that describes a secret phrase that is needed to gain access to a hidden fortress (or in most people’s cases, an email account).

Here’s why I don’t like it – “password” seems to indicate that you’re using a “word”, such as something that is readable and understandable within the set of a spoken language. Like “dog”, or “awesome”. Those are words. Unfortunately they are probably used as passwords by somebody, somebody waiting to get an account hacked.

Times have changed

You don’t want to use basic words as passwords anymore. It’s a bad idea.

Not only does it give somebody the ability to guess the password (even though that would usually be kinda hard), it also gives hackers the ability to use dictionary tools to hack your account without much effort.

A lot of inexperienced Internet users use very poor passwords, in terms of complexity and ability to be guessed or hacked. Most of these people can’t be blamed though, mainly because they just need to be educated on the topic so they understand why they should use tricky passwords.

The problem…

When an inexperienced Internet user is prompted to create a “password”, they immediately hear the term “word” – and they probably think of a “word” to use as their password. It’s just natural.

Not a good idea.

The word “password” suggests to people to pick something that is indeed a word, which is a bad idea.

Those aren’t words

These days, a secure password is something like “a$W.e+S)0!m@E”.

Countless web applications are requiring users to create passwords with a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. Rarely will a web hosting provider let you set a password that contains any less than those three items, for example.

Those types of passwords aren’t words. Those are complex phrases of characters, unable to be spoken or pronounced as words.

That’s a good thing though. But, as you can see, the term “word” doesn’t really apply to these cryptic strings of characters, letters and numbers.

The whole problem is that I don’t know of anything better to call them. Maybe something like passkey? Naw, that just doesn’t sound right.

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Gmail, Seriousness & Retro Web Design

Wow, it’s actually nice outside today. No more snow. The sun is out. Very little wind. I was driving around with windows down. And yet due to being an Internet fiend I’m sitting here typing on my keyboard.

Ah yes, the life of an Internet user. I’m gonna type this fast so I can get back to standing on my not-so-awesome apartment balcony.

New Gmail security feature

Gmail recently added a new feature that allows it’s users to detect suspicious account activity. This I like.

Half the battle in regards to keeping online accounts secure is knowing who is accessing them, and this feature allows you to keep tabs on whether or not your account is being accessed where it’s supposed to be accessed.

Got somebody logging into your account from another country? A country that you’ve never visited in your life, much less accessed the Internet from? Gmail will tell you if it happens.

Are you taking yourself too seriously?

I think this is a question that every person should probably ask themselves, at least as far as the Internet is concerned, which is why I laughed when I read this.

However, I think that some of the points being made in that post are not actually so bad. Posing for a social media profile picture? Aren’t most people posing for pictures anyways, regardless of where it ends up?

I don’t think that it’s a bad thing for people to take themselves too seriously on the Internet, however. Many different approaches have worked for many different people with both good and bad results, for many things. I can’t just cut a solid line down the middle of that argument myself.

Retro web designs

Check out this list of retro and vintage web designs. There’s 50 sweet examples. This is appropriately titled as “inspiring”.

Retro web design isn’t cliche yet is it? I hope not, I still like it.

There’s just something cool about designs that play off styles of the past, they can have a haunting look and feel.

Closing note -

If I spent the last 5 minutes tweaking the heading sizes on this post, as opposed to spending only 10 minutes writing this, am I taking myself too seriously on the Internet?

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