Under Construction, please excuse our mess

ILONA ANDREWS

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author

You are here: Home / Blog / You should change your password
NEVER MISS A BOOK RELEASE

Join 30,000 Subscribers

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO
PUBLISHING NEWS

New book releases, give-aways, and appearances.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO
BLOG UPDATES

Free fiction, snippets, and funny stories.

Read our Privacy Policy.

Reader Interactions

Comments

      • Finally watched. That was hilarious. What irks me is when they specify which special character you can use. “What do you mean I can’t use the # key? It’s MY special character. I won’t be able to remember my password if it doesn’t have the #.”

        Or, as someone who has to use at least 14 characters in passwords at work and then come across a website where they restrict you to 8 characters. How am I supposed to come up with a phrase with only 8 characters? You heathens. I can maybe, maybe do 10, but 8 is just barbaric. And I can’t use the # key?! Forget it, I’ll shop elsewhere!

        • My father told me his method for work passwords (long retired so hackers can’t piggy back to your credit card transactions). He worked at a firm that ran the code that did credit card and other financial transactions. So they had passwords before the rest of us needed them. They had to be long, they had to have numbers, they had to have special characters, they had to change every couple weeks. So he would start at a point on the keyboard and follow a pattern (like how the knight in chess goes forward one space and over two). It was always the same pattern but each time he had to change the password he would change the starting place. He would then write that starting key down and place it near his keyboard. One of the more ingenious things he actually did. Now this same man keeps all his passwords in an excel file and tries to get his children to give him their passwords to also be kept in said file. His youngest (me) says NO.

  3. This so so true. I work in IT and I still am guilty of chosing my special password like this ????

  5. I love this comedian, I discovered him a few years ago….from a previous post/video by House Andrews.

    I still die laughing in the re-watching of: People without Children Just Don’t Know….

    If you haven’t watched it and have children…go watch now 🙂

    • OMG???????????????????????????????? it’s been so long since I’ve laughed that hard.! It’s so true. I’m lucky though, I’ve only got one to wrangle.????

    • Saw this video already because I love Michael McIntyre. I was dying. Capitalizing the first letter and adding 1 as the last character is so me. I still do that, but I stopped using the same password for everything. I’ve become very fond of the use of fingerprints to get into my phone and certain apps, like my bank. I wish more companies would have that function.

      I just read an article about people losing the passwords to their Bitcoin wallets. There are literally people who cannot access millions of dollars because they wrote the password down on some piece of paper that is long gone. And you get 10 tries and then the account freezes forever. My solution to this? Tattoo the number somewhere on you that’s not visible. Like, if you’re a man, shave your armpit or some of the hair on your head and put it there. If it means losing millions of dollars, it’s worth it.

  6. Ha!
    That’s where he’s wrong!
    I used a dollar sign for my special …..

    Never mind. I’ll be back.

  8. I love Michael McIntyre, his video on how Americans don’t understand the English Language is golden too!

  9. There’s always the perennial “123456”, “Password”, and “ABCDEF”, with maybe a special character thrown in. Maybe. Very strong.

    • I have two prototype passwords and one of them has even 3 numbers! But only because my favorite number (of 2 digits) wasn’t enough to reach the minimum set of characters together with the word I chose ????

  12. Hm, I must be the biggest weirdo (or paranoid) ever. My first password (back in 1993, to completely date myself) was a made up word from a sci-fi novel, 7 characters long with half of it capitalized, half the vowels substituted with numbers, and the other half with the “special” characters. Oddly, I still remember it but generally use a toss-away that closely resembles the ones described in the video. ???? is that a sign of maturity (I’m no longer as paranoid) or laziness (every site seems to want a new password every 3-6 months and I can’t remember the complex ones anymore)?

    • With all the passwords I should, but can’t, remember, I usualy click the ‘remember me’ option and also tell my browser to store the password in a keychain.
      So the net result is that I’m probably less safe with all my passwords stored on my hard disk than if my password was some random sentence from some random poem without any numbers or special characters or capitals at all.

  14. I still use the same password for a lot of sites.
    I still can’t remember my Apple password. It has changed so many times.
    I also used some science fiction words as my password in the beginning.
    My mom loved opera and Shakespeare so she would use composer birthday, or when opera premiered for numbers and phrases for password. (“ The quality of mercy is not … “ ). (“Papagano, pop, pop,pop.”)
    Never used!! As special characters.
    Will have to think about new passwords.

  15. OMG thanks so much for the Video clip “Michael McIntyre”
    I had never seen him and that was fantastic and much needed today 🙂

  16. I logged into a site I rarely use any more yesterday. Password hmmm. Worked my way backwards through the various iterations until I got to must have 8 characters variety. No capitals etc required just had to be longer than my then standard 5 letter password which was too short. Really should go back and change that….

  18. I love British comedy so much! Did anyone else binge watch (and rewatch, several times) Taskmaster in 2020?
    Just laughter until actual tears every single episode.

    • Being British, I’m quite fond of British comedy too!!!! Love Taskmaster – have watched since the first series. Over here it gets repeated quite frequently. My favourite task was the one at the steam train museum, and apparently it is not far from where I live, so once lockdown is over I think I might pay a visit.

      • I feel the move to channel 4 may have been a mistake – I’m not sure just being filmed during lockdown can account for the weakness the new season seemed to have, but maybe that was just my general malaise?

  22. I don’t even know what the passwords on most sites are!

    I use a password manager (LastPass in my case) which remembers all my passwords for me and fills them in when I ask it to.

    It also generates random passwords for me (20 or more random characters) on request and fills them in when I am starting to use a new site.

    On many of the major sites it will even change your password with a single click: no need to re-type or do anything

    I just have to remember one strong password for the vault

    I would thoroughly recommend everyone to use a password manager (any of them) and that is what just about every security expert also recommends

    • Yeah, our IT audit guys recommend that too, but I don’t like having ALL my passwords out there in cyber space. If I were a hacker (I’m not), I would hack something like that and get ALL the passwords to everything…… ????‍♀️ We disagree on that every year.

      • I know enough about security to know that if anybody can hack the password manager they can make billions more by selling the capability to the NSA

        It always breaks me up when Bern cracks somebodies encrypted data – something which simply cannot be done in this world except by guessing passwords since brute force takes longer than the age of the universe. He could sell his capability to the NSA for so much money…

        I think it is just that everybody uses TV/film computing in books which is unrelated to the real thing and always allows includes a backdoor so it can be broken

        • Hey John,
          Bern is Magister Exemplaria, a pattern mage of Upper Significant talent level. Magic is involved in his code breaking.

          I hope this helps.

        • The movie “War Games” comes to mind – “Joshua”, “Greetings, Professor Faulkon”, the WOPR system, and “how about a nice game of chess?”

  24. Password policies are ridiculous these days…
    There is a site (unnamed), that I visit only annually (for tax purposes…) and every year when I log in, I’m informed that my 12 month old password is expired and must be changed. Which I dutifully do…. and I will use that password only once, it twelve months, when it will be expired…

    And what is the point of this exactly? I suppose that if I skip a year, I will be informed that my 24 month old password is expired….. nevertheless, it will accept it long enough for my to change it.

  25. I love Michael McIntyre. One of my favorites is his visit to the fortune teller. POV is pre-pandemic. I laughed till it hurt.

  26. Bahahha not just the people in the London Paladium! ????????
    Love Michael McIntyre! Great British comedy ????

  31. There’s a guy in Germany with 240 mio.€ in Bitcoin- as he got in early and bought some. He forgot the password, used 8 of 10 false tries. After number ten, the account goes poof. It’s a security measure with Bitcoin. He cannot do anything about it, no reset possible. Not a joke!

  33. OMG! I ROFLOL and cried. Thank you, Ilona Andrews. I needed this today.

    Mother’s Covid vaccination appointment was today. Because she is on a number of prescription meds at age 77 and demented, we had to have her primary care doctor fill out paperwork for health department. Then doctor office lawyer said no they couldn’t sign form because apparently health department made up their own form. I understood all sides. So I finally said to doctor office that we needed them to write a prescription for her to get Covid vaccine elsewhere ie like when we get vaccinated at Minute Clinic for flu or shingles etc. they did and I had no problems with health department. Talk about my stress levels elevating.

    Thank you so much for the hilarious video. I actually have a little black book just for passwords as at work multiple software required a unique different multi character password for each software for x number of weeks then had to change to something else different from prior 8 passwords. And I carried that over into personal life. My tools are a physical Webster dictionary and a set of dice. Sigh. Sigh.

  34. Funny video good but I was on this site earlier today and there was a different blog post up. When I clicked on it I got a 404 UA to find page message and the “continue reading” tab was black (not red) and inactive. I’m super curious! Anybody know what THAT post was about?

    • Hello Erika,
      A small snipped of Ruby Fever was previously posted and removed due to comments…which did not show the best of BDH attitude, let’s say.

      • I’m sorry I missed the post but more sorry that you had to deal with less than the best attitude, which hopefully is an infrequent occurrence.

        • Wow, now I’m super bummed I missed it! And I’m really annoyed that my fellow BDH friends caused problems. Come on guys, we’re missing out cuz some of you can’t restrain yourselves! Thanks for the reply though R.

  37. I was in a security meeting a few years back and was told that computer software does most of the hacking now a days. So having a longer password opposed to a more complex is better. So ‘hellhathnofurylikeawomanscorned’ would be great (not that it’s one of my passwords, but now I kinda want it to be), and then when a site wants all the extras? Hellhathnofurylikeawomanscorned1! 😀

  38. Love watching his stuff!! This felt like a magic trick every step of the way! Guilty as charged!!

  39. I am forced to change my work password every 30 days and it can’t be something I’ve used the last 10 times. Remembering the dreaded password for the first couple of days results in inappropriate words being used.

    • Ours has to be at least 14 characters, changes every 60 days, and you can’t repeat the last 24 passwords. I’m good the first couple of days. It’s around day 4 I stop being vigilant and let my fingers do what they remember, which is the previous password. Downside of being able to type without looking at the keys is that muscle memory can really work against you. First time you don’t think of what you typed. Second time yoh remember the new password right after pressing Enter. Third time you’re afraid you’re going to lock your account so you try to be careful, which slows you down, which gives you time to think, which screws up the muscle memory of the new password, which means you have go carefully spell out the new words.

      It’s a vicious circle, I tell ya, vicious. Day 4 sucks.

  40. I got hacked on social media and l had to change my password. Every one l thought of my son 1 said not good enough. I now have a password about 15 characters long. I had to write it down.

    • A simple way to have a good password you can remember is to take a rhyme or song you can remember and take the first letter of each word.

      For example (don’t use this one!!!!):

      The grand old duke of York,
      he had ten thousand men.

      This give a password of

      TgodoY,hhttm.

      which is pretty good

      You can enhance it by for example replacing ten thousand with 10k which gives

      TgodoY,hh10km.

      which will meet most password criteria and is still easy to remember

      • I do something similar, but I use a sentence that I thought of myself and that has some meaning for me – like: I own three beautiful dogs who destroy everything they can reach.

        In my native german that would be “Ich habe drei wunderschöne Hunde, die alles zerstören, was sich in ihrer Reichweite befindet.” Then I take the first letter of every word and replace three (drei) by 3:
        Ih3wH,daz,wsiiRb.

        For stuff with low security, I use a slightly modified version of a single password (not the one I wrote here ^^). I just take one or more letters from the website/service you are using and add them to my password. For example I would always take the second and third letter from the site address (or company name, or software), add one of those letters to the beginning of the password and the other one to the end.

        So for this site I would take l and o, and the password would be lIh3wH,daz,wsiiRb.o
        Looks really complicated but is very easy to remember. Though typing it correctly on a phone can get complicated *lol*

      • I do that for my work password usually taking a line from one of the songs we are working on in choir and adding some random numbers and characters. Bit stumped as we are currently on hiatus from choir due to COVID!

  41. It’s worse… In most work environments
    You have to CHANGE you password every 1 to 2 months
    And you can’t go back to a password you used less than 1 (or even 2) years ago
    And that on top of all the earlier requirements

    • Ikr! I confess that 1 yr that special word for me was a power word from KD word followed by no.and that special character

    • This often leads to people just adding a few numbers – like 0121 if you were last forced to change the password in january 2021. And if only changing numbers doesn’t work, they’ll use jan21 etc.

      I recently read that this forced password change doesn’t really add security but rather leads to more generic passwords, since people otherwise just can’t remember them.

    • And yet, you would not believe the number of consecutive passwords — original password “House1”. Next month, new password “House2”. And so on. Assuming the base password is relatively secure (something better than House), it’s not awful. But given the preponderance of this usage, it’s not great, either.

  43. So true!

    I worked as an apprentice for german telecom in the end of the 90s when they introduced new password rules for the technicians (those who installed new connections at the customers place or repaired them, as all of them had a company owned laptop).

    Each password had to have at least 2 capital letters, 2 lower case letters and two numbers. At first, my colleagues were outraged – who could remember such a difficult password? But soon a solution was discovered and shared amongst all:

    DTag99

    DT for Deutsche Telekom (german telecom)
    ag for Aktiengesellschaft (shareholder company, probably equivalent to just using corp after your company name)
    99 for the current year

    I believe they later also had to have a “special case” and passwords had to be changed every 3 months and be different from the last 7 or so that had been used – so DTag1.99 it was. One or two extra numbers for the last month in which you were forced to change it and a . to separate month and year (as is usual in writing dates in german)…

    I really hope they no longer practice that, otherwise I’ve just given the whole internet access to all laptops from german telecom technicians (at least in my area) – but it is a really stupid and unsafe password anyway ^^

  44. There is a list here of common and easily cracked passwords https://nordpass.com/most-common-passwords-list/.

    Lots of first names! I remember some years ago my secretary tried to get into my PC (for good work reasons, I must add). And said she had tried my husband and kids’ names… even back then my password was a bit more sophisticated than that

  47. Does anyone know the physical size of the new book, i.e., Trade Publication Size, normal paperback size, or something else. Not sure how to get answer but will check here I guess.

    • Hello Montgomery,

      The dimensions for the paperback are 5.5 x 0.82 x 8.5 inches. I hope this helps.

  48. This man is so funny. I remember he was interviewed as a celebrity in a reasonably priced car on the old British Top Gear. He was one of the few who was actually entertaining (most were just “look at me and all my wonderful expensive cars”). His story of driving with his wife on the M-whatever it was in a Princess (Fiat, it was a car we don’t have in the US) had me in TEARS. He then went on to explain how he forgot the term for jerry-can and the closest he got was “gasoline suitcase”.

  49. Password Security – Microsoft Word will allow you to create document and password protect it, with 256Bit Encryption. Then inside that document, you make listing of all sites with different user id’s and different passwords and put into that document. Once completed, you then have safer local repository of all your stuff. Then instead of trying to remember every pswd, you remember the one for your document, then just look up which place and copy and paste into the login line. Been using this method for over 15 years, never been hacked. Behind two firewalls as well. About monthly print it out, place in safe, meaning real physical safe, not at bank safety deposit box. And do NOT store any passwords online “in supposedly safe password vault”. Based on recent hacks, many of those sites will or have been breached. You should also lock down all your credit files at all three bureaus. Then even if hacked, those are encrypted at even higher level.

  51. Moderator, that sounds like trade publication size. Great, will match close to hardback size. Any idea when HB going to be released? That would be preferred, since been getting HB of the series I like for while now.

  52. I actually had to make a list with all my different passwords on it. And it on my phone but under finger print lock. Only problem I forget to update sometimes then get upset with self when I can’t remember the new one…..

  54. Hi – I’ve not watched yet but HA must be prescient- my husband’s FB account got hacked this morning so I slightly freaked when I saw the headline, thinking I’d somehow spread it, even though I don’t have FB!

  56. That is hilarious. I happen to watch this clip just last week and while he was talking, I was thinking exactly that….I need to change my password. LMAO. Thanks for the Friday laugh. 🙂

  57. I absolutely relate to adding the 1 on the end, although I originally added a silent E on the end for my capital letter and replaced any a’s with @‘s for the special characters. (I would not be sharing my super-impenetrable strategies if these passwords had been used in the last 15 years).

    For the last 4-5 years, I have allowed my iPhone to generate my passwords, so most sites now have some random 16-character password with special characters and numbers and capitalized letters… and I have NO idea what they are. But recently we have been having problems with the additional security some sites use for our credit cards — when our cards rolled over in December, suddenly the second layer stopped working, and the credit card issuers, whose fault it is, have been monumentally unhelpful.

    It especially hits us with ordering groceries — we have had to arrange other payment methods because it’s so broken. I had set up the accounts at the grocery stores. I had to send my husband the logins. Which meant I had to extract the passwords from the depths of my phone.

    My phone has a choice of either a thumbprint or a PIN. The PIN is 6 numbers. So all my super secret passwords are ultimately protected by a 6-digit PIN. My husband has a super-secure lock program with all of his randomly generated passwords, and the super secure program is locked with something he has to be able to remember. So, much like with my phone, the security measures are the equivalent of a super high end retinal scanning lock on a 50 year old door with the rusty hinges on the outside (our local geek lab has just suck a lock on just such a door, with the added benefit that the lock is attached on the non-hinged side to actual rotten wood, which *I* could kick in, and I’m a 90-lb weakling (figuratively) ).

    So if someone manages to hack the 6-digit numerical PIN, they have access to every (ok, 90% of) the passwords I have. I have also heard the thumb prints also aren’t particularly secure.

    I console myself with the fact that I actually have nothing, and that if someone manages to order something we’d get an alert immediately.

    But. If I end up losing my phone, I am SOL when time for entering pwords comes in. Since I have no idea what they are.

  58. As an IT professional with hundreds of passwords, I recommend everyone check out Lastpass.com, a password manager app.

    • I just commented that also. I never have to worry anymore. When I come across an old Capitol6 password I just let LastPass generate me a new one. If it’s particularly critical I write it down in a small notebook in case I pass away and my daughter needs it. Morbid thoughts, me.

  59. Ohh man! I basically grew up along side the tech, and my favorite saying is ‘I had to do school projects before the Internet.’

    That password thing…. yeah mabey I shoud go change it lolz

  64. When I need to change a password, I pick a random word of the right length off something on my desk and play with it as required by the site. It works for me.

  65. I love Michael Mcintyre. He makes the everyday hilarious. He does a bit about a junk drawer that makes me laugh until I cry it’s so true,

  66. Hysterical. Brings back a lot of memories. I worked on a client Help Desk as part of the Information Services team for a large company back in the early ’90’s. That was back when companies still had their own IT instead of outsourcing it. We used to get users who had issues where their password was creative things like “logoff” or “exit”.

    We had our own special codes for when we filled out our response logs. One of the kinder ones was “PEBKAC”, Problem Exists Between User and Chair”.

  69. Oh I do love Michael McIntyre!! Thank you for the laughs!

    I feel slightly smug, only slightly mind, that my special word has 3 numbers in it! But…well, they are all at the end and an order that makes sense to me…. Oh well.

  70. I’m still laughing over your video clip posting of Michael McIntrye’s comedy sketch on computer passwords.

    Thank you for sharing this!

  71. So my password at work changes regularly and mine is structured as capital letter, numbers, lower case letters. The number in the middle is always a month and year a couple months in the future. So when I have to change it, I just change the numbers to be a new date. That way I can always remember it.

  75. Oh lord no…. I’ve got to change 5 passwords every 180 days, or I can’t work. I’m out of deceased family dogs and cat names, off the wall family expressions misspelled.. OH NO, not going there…

  76. After a week of caring for 2 year old twins while mom was in the hospital and hours of Cocomelon and baby shark, I needed this. Thank you.

  77. This is off-topic but I desperately need an answer: do you think Caldenia would drink and enjoy this?

  79. well, now you have to have a number and special character in your username for certain sites as well.

  81. My method for passwords: I have a Word document which contains letters, numbers, and special characters obtained when I randomly ran my hands over my keyboard, hitting the caps now and then, going to the numbers bar, etc. until I have ~ 20 lines of gibberish. When it’s time for a password I cut out 8 to 10 characters. Upside, there’s no methodology to the selection and it’s not based on me or my life. Downside, I have to clean out any forbidden characters before I can use the new password. Also, there’s no way I can remember it, so I have to keep a list.

  82. Michael’s routine was really funny. I appreciated the fact that it was funny without being smutty. I definitely plan to look up more of his routines.
    Question: does he remind anyone else of the young man in the black suit with the white quill pen? The picture is on the Nov 28 blog “Five Random Questions”.

  84. Thank you ^_^ I laughed SO hard! His clip about how non-parents have no idea is worth a glance as well.

  85. I was laughing throughout. He is so right! I remember those sequence of events as the password requirements progressed to current. OMG! And I still fall back on ‘!’ as my special character. I guess it’s time to retire it!

  86. I’m old enough to have started as a legal secretary before the eletronic digital world. When we cut and pasted, we used a scissors and tape. Bet you didn’t know that was literal.. I know shorthand so I would write down my password along with caps , numbers and special characters and post it boldly on the walls of my cubicle, changing it as required each month. Also great for shopping lists and rude comments during meetings. You look diligent while writing down what an idiot was talking. Also to do lists. IT once figured out that it might be a password list due to the number and special character. He decided to leave me be as no one could read it, and I wasn’t one of the many in our dept requiring regular password resets.

  87. I use character names from a set of books I like. I have one “go to” that gets used for unimportant stuff. MM is funny, I love the kids sketch, oh so true.

  89. I have seen this guy’s latest stand-up on Netflix and he is hilarious!????????????
    In fact, the main reason I have Netflix is because they have so many great stand-up shows and artists! I love to laugh, more so last year than any other!????????????

  92. Yubikeys or similar is what everyone should be using. It makes it so your email and everything else cannot be hacked. So your password does not really matter. Now if you lose that key or your keychain…well you are sol.

  94. My last workplace decreed that we users couldn’t have three consecutive letters from our names in our password.

    You can see my first name above.

  96. I will never forget starting work and asking for the generic password and being told it’s secret, I was all “yes, I know but I need to use it” and my colleagues falling over themselves laughing before telling me it was “Secret, with a Capital S!” Our IT team had a twisted sense of humour…

  97. I use LastPass. It creates a unique password for all your websites filled with all these criteria and keeps track of them for me in an app that uses facial recognition to access (or a master password that is capitalized with a number at the end lol)

  98. I love his comedy. I have seen this one before and it still makes me laugh. Some of his routines about his children and family life are hysterical. Thank you for the laugh today.

  99. Moderator – Thank you for answer on HB book.

    Love the comments, passwords are serious business, and in this day and age, should be taken that way. Sorry, close to retirement in 08 and Government was hacked, all my “data was so called stolen”, again later on OPM was hacked again, retirement data supposedly stolen.

    I locked up credit files prior to first hack, so they did not get access to that data. Then the credit bureau breach, again, my stuff might have been stolen, but it was encrypted. It’s extremely hard to break that, can be done, need room full of PC to do it. So please take seriously, and keep your stuff off the net, and lock your credit files. A website I use for Newsgroup searches was hacked before Xmas, they are still down to this date, and no personal info stored there, but, will need to change PW for access to site. I use two level Authentication for all financial places. This is serious folks, comedy aside. If you have never had to chase after the people with your CC data, or find checking account empty, trying to stop them before all gone, they you have no idea of problems. Now a days, they can steal your house if not careful, putting in trust can save that issue.

  100. This reminds me of the poor guy has 220,000,000 million in Bitcoin but can’t collect because he forgot his password

  101. Well, passwords with random generation are hard on the human brain. That’s why most people create them sequentialy from a root : root01, root02 etc…
    That’s the main problem with security: when humans are concerned, convenience trumps security (almost always)

    As an aside, forcing people to generate a password that MUST contain one capitalized letter, one number and one special character actually weakens the strength of the password because it restricts the variance. They should say CAN contain the aforementioned options.

Skip to content