Friday, June 19, 2015

UserID's, Passwords and PIN's

How many UserID's and passwords or PIN's do you have set up?

It Used to be Simpler

It seems that passwords are getting a bit more simple by having most people just use their e-mail address when a new one is created.  Of course, there are many sites that want you to create a unique UserID that isn't an e-mail address as well.

I can count a total of nine different UserID's I have for various applications, systems or web pages.

But passwords and PIN's...that's a whole different story.

It used to be that I had two passwords and two PIN's.  One password/PIN for business and highly confidential things (like my ATM card) and one password/PIN for on-line things, like setting up an account on Amazon.

It was bad enough when PIN requirements started to vary between 4 and 6 digits, requiring me to set up multiple PIN numbers.  But then a number of factors made passwords a LOT more complex:

  1. Comcast did nothing to prevent automated applications from trying endlessly to figure out passwords, so if you had a Comcast e-mail address (or two or three), you had to come up with a more sophisticated password to avoid being hacked (yes, I was hacked and my password consisted of a misspelled word and numbers and it still wasn't secure).
  2. Some systems required a password with a special character - F%CK!
  3. Some systems required that no part of the password contain a real word - PHUCK!
  4. Some systems required that both upper case and lower case letters were used - Fuck!
  5. Some systems required the password contain a number (or numbers) - 4FuckSake!
  6. Some systems required that the password was 8-12 characters long - fuckkkk!
  7. Some systems required that the special character or number(s) were embedded in the middle of the password - o4FuckSake!
  8. And of course, some systems required that there be no special characters, or no numbers or no upper case letters - wtfwtfwtf
And they just keep getting more and more disparate in their requirements for a "secure password."  So disparate, that now I have at least 25 different passwords.

So, of course, I do the worst possible thing...maintain a list of all my UserID's and Passwords/PIN's in a place where they could potentially be hacked.  ugh!

Current Spinning

For those following my latest spinning dilemma, I had two bobbins of singles completed with the initial intention of plying them together.  But I liked both singles individually well enough that I didn't want to waste either of them by using them in a yarn that wouldn't make either of them look better.

So here's what I came up with for the multicolor superwash BFL.  I found a pile of old merino singles I had spun for a different project and picked an olive green and plied it with the BFL.  Very colorful combination and I can't wait to try knitting with the resulting yarn.

I actually had multiple wonderful photos to post here, but accidentally deleted them.  I'll have to post photos of the resulting yarn when I get home on Friday.

AND, I need to figure out how I want to finish the British Romney.

I didn't delete this photo of Nico!

Nico "scratching" on glass door wanting to come out on the deck.



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