What am I?
I’m not easy to remember. I should be, but people keep writing me down on scrap pieces of paper, and by the time lunch ends, I’m in the garbage bin, smeared with mustard.
When people forget me (and this happens more often than I’m proud enough to admit), there is typically a mild-to-moderate panic. There is a mental scrounging. There are painstaking attempts at remembering me, suffered through multiple hits of the Enter key. There are hurried rereads of emails, a shuffling of loose papers, perhaps a phone call to a spouse or partner. And at the last moment of hope, there is either success – remembrance! – or a total and utter breakdown, a giving up.
Am I pesky? My haters would say yes. But you know how valuable I am. When it comes to protecting your important digital files, I’m the first to lay down the rules about who is allowed in. And I can be firm without being rude or starting a fight.
When I’m strong, I can protect your files from the worst of the hackers and malicious softwares out there in the big, nasty, spam-filled, bot-crawling World Wide Web. And unlike your typical all-protein meal plan and rigorous CrossFit regime, it doesn’t take that much work to make me strong. To make the most of my power, all you need to do is use the rules.
My rules are simple:
Make me at least 8 characters long.
Use a combination of upper and lower case letters.
Throw in a number or two
Don’t use complete words.
Throw in symbols like a @ or a $ or a &*(&#!!!!
To be honest, I take an unreasonable amount of pride in my dichotomous nature. I’m simple to make, but so, so complicated. I guess that’s what it takes to keep your digital stuff protected. Without me, you’d have a world of a mess to deal with. Exposing your personal and professional data to a landscape of over a billion web users is frightening stuff, especially when your reputation and digital devices are at risk of being compromised. So why not take me seriously?
What I mean is, the next time you need me, stop and think about what I should be made up of. C’mon, you’re creative. Make me complicated, yet memorable. Relate my awkward letters, symbols and numbers to something meaningful for just you. Or, create something totally outrageously difficult to remember, and then record it and keep it in a safe, non-digital place (ex: on a designated page in your address book, or on a piece of paper tucked into your wallet). Show me some respect, because you know I’m doing you some huge favours every day, keeping spam attacks out, hackers at bay, and your digital files safe.
Have you gU33s5&D what I am yet?
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Draw date: April 30th 2015. The winner* will be announced on this blog May 1st 2015.
Image credit: “Download” by Jay Wennington [ https://download.unsplash.com/photo-1414509613498-f53000d3d2c1 ]
The post Guess What I Am: An Essay on Web Security appeared first on Navigator Multimedia.