Sometimes its smart to use dumb passwords
The recent Yahoo hack reveals a new way to look at passwords
If we've learned one thing from this Yahoo hack, it's that even after countless blogger and security expert pleas for smarter choices, people continue to create amazingly obvious passwords, leading us to wonder if they might be doing it on purpose. And if so, bravo!
In today's Yahoo Voices breach, for example, the most popular choice for account security were the now familiar most popular password when logins are breached: "123456" followed by "password." At face value, it's hard to see these password pickers as smart. They would be regarded by experts and any half-seasoned Internet user as incredibly weak passwords. And it's fun to laugh about the fact that there are some truly unskilled individuals left in digital humanity. These computer users should have already learned the importance of password safety from years of menacing hackers. If not, then last month's LinkedIn or eHarmony hacks should have resonated. But maybe these password pickers have learned. And they're the ones laughing, having picked those dumb passwords with full awareness of the online password situation.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire.