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Young Writers Society


Is Your Password Secure?



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Wed Oct 08, 2008 4:16 pm
Nate says...



Coming up with a good password is extremely important in this day of age. Every day you hear about new hacker attacks on sites like MySpace and Bebo (I have not heard of a single one on Facebook though). A couple of weeks ago, some hacker got upset about something Bill O'Reilly said (an American pundit), and hacked the passwords of a bunch of the members of his web site.

So how can you keep your password secure? First, let me say what YWS does.

On YWS, your passwords are encrypted in MD5 hash format. Say your password is password1 (which is the most common password on the net). When checking to see if you typed the right password, YWS first converts password1 into MD5, and it comes out with 7c6a180b36896a0a8c02787eeafb0e4c. If that hash matches the one in the database, all good! By the way, it doesn't work if you try 7c6a180b36896a0a8c02787eeafb0e4c to begin with as YWS would convert that to its MD5 hash equivalent, which would be: 816b09aa255516ec745de7b215e2e158.

Even though YWS has never been hacked, other sites are regularly and most use MD5. Unfortunately MD5 isn't as secure as it used to be. Hackers are getting good, which is part of the reason YWS will be changing early next year. The new YWS has a more secure encryption method that is just about impossible to crack.

Even so, if you follow some general principles, your password will be all but impossible to crack:
    1. Use lower case and upper case letters
    2. Use symbols like $, %, ^, and *.
    3. Use numbers
    4. Should be at least eight characters long.
    5. Mix it up. Instead of jordan23, use jor23dan.


You don't need to follow all the principles above, but follow at least three.

To check if your password is good, type it into Google. If you get 0 hits, awesome! Any more than that though and you should change your password.


You should also strongly consider having four or five different passwords. For me, I have a simple password that I use for sites like logging into washingtonpost.com. But for e-mail, I use a stronger password, and I use an even stronger password for YWS (if someone were to hack my account, it could be devastating). Then for my online bank account, I use a very, very strong password.
  





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Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:17 pm
Jon says...



Okay...

Can you change your password on here once you've set it though?


---Jon---
:D
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Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:31 pm
Blink says...



wisemann210 wrote:Okay...

Can you change your password on here once you've set it though?


---Jon---
:D

Yup, just hit... My YWS > My Avatar/Photo

But ye, I should make my password more secure.

Password1 is the most common password :shock: And they wonder why it's hacked?

:smt102
"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction." ~ Oscar Wilde
  





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Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:40 pm
Jon says...



Thanks
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Support GLBT people -- God does.

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Wed Oct 08, 2008 8:57 pm
JFW1415 says...



Eh... mine got 2,340 hits?

And another one of mine got 35,700,000?

And my myspace one got 130?

My school one got none! But if you know me then it's obvious.

And my bank one got 1,750,000?

My bank one wasn't my fault! I'm 14, so it's under my mom's name and mine, so we both went in to get it. They messed up or something though, but we had to leave 'cause it was just my mom's lunch break. So then my mom went back alone and typed it in! And it's obvious! I hate it.

Eh... they're all obvious, actually...

I need to change these...

But! Most sites get hacked because people give out their passwords. Most of my friends tell their boyfriends their passwords, and vice versa. And with how many times they get new boyfriends... well, you do the math.

~JFW1415
  





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Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:03 pm
alwaysawriter says...



I have different varations of one of my passwords and change them frequently because of my parents and their snooping. :)
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Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:40 pm
Manny says...



Good thing I use the same password for everything. ;)
  





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Wed Oct 08, 2008 10:07 pm
tinny says...



Most of my passwords returned zero hits, yey!
please grant me my small wish; (love me to the marrow of my bones)
  





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Thu Oct 09, 2008 4:21 am
Manny says...



Mine got 386,000,000 hits on google.
  





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Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:00 am
Aet Lindling says...



Without even looking, I know my password will return zero results, cause I'm awesome like that.

Six letter word with no relation to me, with two numbers inserted in random places.

My password used to be iloveyou. My sense of security came at the precocious age of 7, and I wisened up and changed it to what it now is.

However, it's what I use for pretty much everything, so if someone figures it out, I'm screwed. I should probably do something about that...
dun worry
it's all gun be k
  





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Thu Oct 09, 2008 5:44 am
Crysi says...



Two of my passwords came up with hits, but oh well. Those are the passwords I use on things I really don't care about.
Love and Light
  





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Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:18 am
OverEasy says...



I type random letters and numbers, write them down, memorize them, and that's my password. ^^


So far I was only hacked once, and it was because I was a stupid head and I fell for one of those things where you have to enter your password to get the answer or whatever. Teehee
Life is for living.
  





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Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:28 am
Princess says...



I usually use my full name for my password. It is simple, easy to memorize, and nobody knows it. (except on facebook, but I do not use that password there)

And if you think the first few letters of my password are 'Emma', think again.

Also, I use my favorite number at the end of all of my passwords.. Nope.. I ain't telling.


So, I think I am pretty safe.
I came into this world wrinkled and ugly. And no matter how much I accumulate here, it's a short journey. I will go out of this world wrinkled and ugly. So I enjoy life.
  





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Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:40 am
Mars says...



I've been using my password since....
....
well, it's been awhile.
Time for a change, I suppose.
'life tastes sweeter when it's wrapped in poetry'
-the wombats


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It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
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