27/10/2020 2 Minutes read Tech

Passwords are boring

Ahh passwords! Fruit of our imagination, we like to write them down on post-its and always use the same one. We are doing that because passwords are boring.

Alex Labonne Ingénieur Front

Boring to find, boring to memorize, boring because they should be unique, and because eventually, we never know why those stupid forms are yelling at us.

But it’s necessary

Security is not about living underground or having a fortress to protect your Tinder account.

Remember the joke: “If a bear attacks you and your friend, you don’t need to outrun a bear, just need to outrun your friend.”?

Well, that’s security! It should be easier to hack your neighbor than you. So we must choose our passwords wisely: Long, with different sorts of characters, and unique.

Build your own passwords

That’s it, passwords seem boring and difficult to find and memorize but hey, they don’t have to be! You could find a random picture, find objects in it and add them in a sentence. Like this:

cat
glasses
bow tie
computer
…

Add them together: “A Cat with Glasses and Bow Tie on a Computer”. Next, add some special characters and you have a nice password !

%A C4t with Glass3s and Bow Tie on @ Computer%

You can even use your own secrets as passwords:

I love U 3 thousands!
I always wanted to say that I’m [put something here] 🙂
Always take a towel to travel

Voilà!

How could they be less boring but still hard to hack? Here comes your hero: The password manager.

Password manager

A password manager will create and store your secure passwords for you. You don’t have to memorize strong passwords. You can just copy/paste them! Securely.

Password managers can be free or paid. They can run locally (you own your data) or on the cloud (your data is hosted on someone else’s computer, but is always available).

Choosing one will depend on your use and how much you value your digital data. Here is a comparison of password managers.

It’s that easy. After that you’ll love passwords!

Remember that nothing is unhackable, it happens every month. Even Google, Facebook or Apple have been successfully attacked and it will happen again.

Don’t forget that SMS can be hijacked, cards stolen and fingerprints duplicated (Did anyone really think facial recognition was the future of security, when most of us have already 40 high resolution selfies publicly available on Facebook?).

But those technologies combined with passwords offer a greater barrier against attacks. The umbrella term for that is: 2 Factors Authentication.

E.g.: Your bank can provide you a pin generator to use each time you want to purchase something on the internet.