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A password worth having
Make a long password, use a different one for every account that matters, and change your most reused one.
1Look
Two passwords
Two passwords side by side
On the left, 'Ch@rlie09' with a short red strength meter. On the right, 'purple bus late again' with a long green meter and a note: four words, twenty-two characters.
The one on the right has no symbols, no capitals and nothing clever about it. It would take a computer far longer to guess than the one on the left.
2The idea
Length beats symbols
You have been told to use a symbol and a number. Turning an a into an @ helps almost nothing; every cracking program tries that first. Length is what costs a computer time. Four ordinary words beat one clever one.
Reuse is the other half. One leaked password from a game you played in year five opens every account you used it on. The leak is not your fault; leaks happen to big companies every month. Reuse is the bit that turns one leak into four.
3The idea
How to make one, and how to keep it
1. Pick four unrelated words. Not a song line, not a film title, not your pet, not a date. Random is the point.
2. Put them together, spaces or dashes, twenty characters or more.
3. Different for every account that matters: email, chat, games with money on them.
4. Keep them somewhere. A password manager, or a notebook in a drawer at home.
Written down at home is safer than reused everywhere. Nobody is breaking into your bedroom for a notebook; they are trying your leaked game password on your email from another continent. Your email matters most, because every other account resets through it.
4The idea
Watch it work once
Ben uses Ch@rlie09 for everything: a game, his email, his chat app, three others. The game gets leaked. Somebody tries Ch@rlie09 on his email. In. From the email they reset his chat app. In. They message his friends asking for gift cards, sounding exactly like him, at two in the morning.
Afterwards, Ben changes his email first: four random words. Then his chat app: four different ones. Then the rest, one a night. One leak had opened four doors because it was one key. Now a leak opens one door, and that door is a game he no longer plays.
5Your turn
The meter, with reasons
Strength meter
Type passwords in (not your real ones). The meter shows how long each would take to guess and says why: length, dictionary words, patterns, and whether it has turned up in a known leak.
Try your pet’s name with a 1 on the end. Then try four words. Look at the difference.
6Decide
Which is the strongest?
Pick one to carry on.
7Watch
One leak
The chain
A kid's old game account is leaked. The same password is tried on her email. Then her photos. Then her chat app. Each login lands. It ends on her chat app opening on a screen she is not holding.
20 secondsOne password, four doors. That is what reuse means.
8Find them
Which of these belong in a password?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 3.
9Say it
The whole rule, out loud
Say it once, like a recipe
“Four words, twenty letters, never the same one twice.”
You will need it every time a new app asks you to make a password and your thumb goes for the old one.
10Do it
Before you leave this page
Pick the password you use in the most places. Change it tonight, on the account that matters most, to four words you can remember. Then never use the old one anywhere again.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Long beats clever. Different everywhere. Never the same one twice.
Next lesson: Two-step, on the accounts that matterBadge 6 · Passwords and Locks
6.1A password worth having6.2Two-step, on the accounts that matter6.3Nobody needs your code★Badge Challenge