Fun With Passwords?
eSims asks: "Most all SysAdmins have the pleasure of picking passwords and while we know the rules for picking good passwords we also know how to have a little fun with them as well. Password choices may be inside jokes about management, comments on the company, or just torture for the users we assign them to, but often they are funny. Without giving away the company secrets what are some of your funny stories about password selection?"
Hypothesis:
IT staff regularly reads user passwords (for fun, profit, bogus administration, lack of professionalism, total misunderstanding of why security requires the sanctity of private passwords).
Try this experiment:
1. Change your password(s) to something abusive toward the IT staff.
2. Observe the IT staff (watch for them to become irate, agitated, angry, or any other such synonyhm).
3. Change this password everywhere you've used it across the Internet
Step 3, of course, brings into question the diligence of the user.
I once read a tip about website passwords where you shouldn't have the same password for all sites that need a logic. One of the best suggestions I read was to have a password of say 4 characters, and intersperse the website name into it.
e.g. if your password is 1234 and you're logging into download.com it might be 1d2o3w4l or if it's slashdot.com then 1s2l3a4s or if it's msn.com then 1c2r3a4p etc. It's different for all and harder to guess, and cos it's not a word, anyone watching the keyboard might not pick up on you typing it.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and