[BC] note to the list

[David Kaye]

--- On Thu, 6/7/12, Kevin Raper <kj4hyd at gmail.com> wrote:

> Both AOL and Yahoo ae very easy to Hack and / or Spoof. In
> addition there is a lot of Malware out there that calls home
> with your Passwords.

The problem is not services such as AOL or Yahoo, but users who use extremely simple passwords.  I have a password dictionary list I use to test security.  It is arranged in the order of most-likely used passwords.  Guess what the most common password is: "password" (!)

Other common passwords used are:  12345, letmein, opensesame, and 696969.

I usually recommend to my computer customers to use combinations of numbers and letters, possibly with some punctuation.  A good password that is easy for the user to remember but hard/impossible for outsiders to guess is the address of a home where the user once lived.  Example:  2539ElmStreet#3