Bob Sirott's One More Thing about passwords

Bob Sirott's One More Thing about passwords

One more thing, about having too many passwords.

Not too long ago "password" was a TV game show. Now the game is to see if you can remember every password for every account, site, and program you have to log into.  It's getting to be impossible.  

Last week it was reported that 400,000 Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail passwords were leaked.  Turns out two of the most common leaked passwords were "qwerty"--that's the top left hand row of letters on all keyboards, "password," "welcome," and ascending numbers like "23456 followed by 1."  

Among the most popular names used were "Michael" "Jordan" and "Michelle." So you may want to avoid using any of those for a password.  

The problem is we're always being asked for another password.  Here at FOX  in the office they're very big on security so they make us change our password every month or so.  Just when you have it memorized you have a new one.  

At any office, you can always tell which employees are just back from vacation -- they just sit at their computer motionless, staring helplessly at their screen because they've completely forgotten their password.  

I hope before he died, Steve Jobs left his Apple geniuses some plans for "fingerprint recognition password replacement."