Tricksssy Passwordssss

Unless you're my dad, you probably use only one or two passwords to log into your various online accounts.  I know I do.  I know it's stupid, too, but I never thought about it much until I came across this article by Ian Clarke about a better way to pick passwords that ensures that you can both remember your password for each site and have a separate password everywhere.  This blog post also explains a little about why it's a bad idea to use the same password in multiple locations--especially using your email address and password as logins on other sites.  Basically, that site can use that information to get into your email account and spam, spam, spam.  Additionally, even if that site is reputable, it can be hacked and your privacy could be violated in that way.  Again, both of these potential situations are not too likely (I think?) but spam sucks!  (I didn't ever think about either of these things, either.) 

So, another approach suggested by Clarke is using many different passwords to fool potential hackers/spammers/privacy violators.  But there is the danger of forgetting which password goes where, or having to alter a password to fit certain site requirements.  He offers another solution: create a formula involving some letters of the domain name, a number, and a set of letters (common to all passwords).  For example, you could use the first four letters, reversed, but capitalizing the fourth letter, followed by "59" and "Xyz".  So my password for Blogger would be Glob59Xyz and my password for Gmail would be Iamg59Xyz.  As Clarke points out, there is the potential to reverse engineer the passwords once you know one, but that takes time and effort.  And it's better than using the same password everywhere.

I might give it a try.  I might not...  I'm lazy when it comes to online security (sorry, Dad).  If nothing else, this article made me realize how connected my online accounts could potentially be.