The Weakest Link—Passwords
According to polls conducted by WiredSafety’s Teenangels, passwords are
shared with at least one other person by 70% of teens. It is seen as a way of
proving how much you trust a friend or romantic interest. And, when coupled
with Parry’s polls of 20,000 elementary school students that showed 84% of them
sharing their password with at least their best friend, we know we have a
problem Houston! When friends are armed with your password and your secrets,
it’s a bad and dangerous combination, especially when they have falling-outs
every hour on the hour.
Even when they are careful not to share them, most passwords can be
easily guessed, especially by someone who knows you and your community well.
There are 20 questions that are the root of most passwords. The exact 20 may
change based on your community and the age of the students, but they typically
include the following:
o
Middle
name
o
Favorite:
§
Sports
team
§
Performing
artist
§
TV show
§
Song
§
Movie
§
Food
§
Car
§
Quote
§
Book
o
The
year you are expected to graduate
o
The
college you want to attend
o
Your
mom’s maiden name
o
Your
pet’s name
They often also include “password,” “[the name of the site],” “[their name],” or “123456” to round out the pack. So, even if they haven’t been given the password as a token of friendship (like a friendship ring), they can easily guess it. (Think about your own password creation methods. Most of us adults fall into the same risk categories as our students!)
To top it off, in many cases students who want to abuse their friend’s
passwords don’t even have to guess or remember it. Since friends using each
others’ computers or devices often store their password for faster revisits,
they merely need to call up the log-in page and there it is!
Saved passwords are a particular problem in schools and community access
centers (libraries, for example). People of all ages tend to forget and instead
save their passwords on the computer to make it easy for them when they return,
but it also makes it easier for the next person to abuse them.
In younger years, the kids use each others’ passwords to log into their
friends Webkinz and Club Penguin accounts and steal points, possessions, and
loot. (This is called “gold” in gaming jargon.) One industrious third grader
used her friend’s password to steal it back! (It’s called self-help. J) And while we lecture them on not sharing
their passwords, they often give them out to have their best friends keep their
virtual pets alive and well or to help them
earn more points when their friends are better at the game.
We tell everyone to use a secure password, with capital and lowercase
letters, numbers, and symbols. That sounds easy, but is usually very hard to
remember. So then we write it down on a sticky sheet glued to our monitor or on
a sheet of paper on our desk or save it under “passwords” on our desktop or in
our documents folder. Not very secure!
So, if you have to use one of those kinds of passwords, use a sentence
that includes memorable numbers instead. It starts with a capital letter, ends
with punctuation (symbol), and has a number and lowercase letters too. It fits
“Parry’s Easy to Remember—Hard to Guess Rule.”
