P4s5w0rds
- a string of characters that allows access to a computer, interface, or system.
- a secret word or phrase that must be used to gain admission to a place.
A password is the most common way to prove your identity. The use of a strong password is essential to ensure your privacy and security. And yet so many of us use the same weak, guessable, easily crackable password for everything. Having to remember dozens of different, long passwords containing a random mix of characters, numbers and upper and lower case letters is difficult – impossible even. So we choose dictionary words often that have meaning for us – maybe the place where we were born, a pet’s name or our favourite football team - chelsea.
Then, either because the system says that we must use a capital letter and a number to make the password stronger, or because we think we are cunning, we substitute some letters for numerals – ‘a’ looks a bit like a 4, an ‘e’ like a 3 so we get Ch3lsea.