Smashing Security, Splinter episode, Passwords with Carol Terrio, Van Yars Schweitzer and Graham Cluley.

Hello everybody and welcome to Smashing Security, a very special episode of Smashing Security.

It's our Splinter episode where we are talking today about tips on how you can better protect yourself online and one of

things which i think we should chat about because people are always asking me what they could be better doing

about it is passwords they're a bit of a problem aren't they? They awful. We all hate them. I don't know anyone who thinks passwords are fun,

but they're kind of a necessary evil, a bit like dandruff shampoo, isn't it? And you know,

we all remember life before passwords. We're all of an age where I don't think I started thinking

about passwords until I was in my teens. Right. To an age where I don't think I started thinking about passwords

until I was in my teens. Right. To be honest, I don't even remember what happens yesterday,

let alone life before the passwords. Poor old Vanya. He's got to that point. He's so old.

He's so old these days. And yeah, I mean, they are a nightmare, aren't they?

Particularly for the sort of, let's put it, the frailer, more elderly generation, people like Vanya,

who are finding it hard to keep track of all of these things. And of course, people are expecting

you to remember lots of passwords, aren't they? Well, that's it. I mean, I have hundreds and

hundreds of accounts, and I, of course, use a unique password, which we're going to talk about why that's important in a second. But I have to, you know, in my head, I wouldn't be able to remember all those. Of course we wouldn't. That's why you can always have one passwords for every site. You choose a nice passport, you remember it, right?

Oh, I see.

You're

thinking you just come up with one strong password and use that everywhere. Yeah. And if you

could remember that. Well, excellent security advice there from Vanier Schweitzer. But I would argue that

maybe choosing a password like Enrico Joyously Leopards 79 isn't such a good idea

because, of course, if you get hacked in one place, if your password spills out in a data breach,

what's the first thing the hackers are going to do?

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