BANGALORE: Are you stuck at an ATM unable to remember the PIN? Or struggling to log into your email having forgotten the password you just changed a day before? These are common encounters in our daily lives entwined in the world of web.
A person well linked to the cyber world owns more than 10 passwords. These include personal mails, system log in, blogs, e-booking of travel tickets, bill payment, ATMs, credit/debit cards, bank lockers and personal files. For media professional Poornima her phonebook is a trusted friend during password hunts. “There is no escaping passwords and remembering 25 of them is no easy task,” she says.
Techie Sreekumar says important passwords should be stored in an Excel file secured by a password again.
“Those in the mobile phone can be secured with a security lock. It is always safe to keep a password stored in our memory,” he said.
A skilled hacker can decrypt any password, except eye scan and fingerprints. Sandeep, senior network engineer with Tulip, says that making a code based on the password is a safe method. “Store the next letter of each alphabet and keep it safe as hard copy. For example, if the password is Raj645, save it as Sbk756,” he says.
Nithin Kumar, system administrators with CA Technologies, uses over 20 passwords daily. “Password characters should be a combination of alphanumeric characters, like letters, numbers, punctuation marks, mathematical and other conventional symbols,” he says.
For those dealing with national secrets, passwords are like milk in tea. Says HAL chairman (Officiating) P V Deshmukh: “It is important to remember passwords while handling sensitive data. The key is to devise your own method,” says Deshmukh.
Indian shuttle star Prakash Padukone keeps it simple. “I have just two passwords (ATM & email),” he says.