rjoc04679

[Dale H. Cook]

At 09:15 PM 3/30/2011, Richard Chonak wrote:

>Here's a computer security tip from a guy with 23 years of I.T. 
>experience (me):
>
>If your e-mail password consists of a dictionary word or a string of 
>letters only, it's easy prey for the spammers' computers to figure 
>out by trial and error.
>
>You should change it to a password containing upper- and lower-case 
>letters, and numerals, and punctuation marks.   It takes spammers 
>much longer to crack something complex like that.

Take it from a guy with 43 years of I.T. experience (me), Richard is 
absolutely correct. I use a utility to generate passwords, but many 
tools to do it are available online. I've always been a fan of Steve 
Gibson (creator of Spinrite) and his site has an excellent tool:

https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

>For example, "Channel-40-Minus-2" is a strong  password.

It would, however, be stronger if it contained no words that were 
vulnerable to a dictionary attack. "NSzYAYh-40%PYICi&2" is much 
stronger, as it contains no dictionary words and incorporates three 
non-alpha-numeric characters (-, % and &) instead of one (-) repeated 
three times.

Dale H. Cook, Contract Engineer, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html