One fine morning an old and rediscovered friend of mine messaged me to let me that she felt her facebook account had been 'hacked'. Though later the problem seemed to have solved itself, (it was not a 'hacked' account, but just the overloaded facebook server), I none-the-less decided that I must put some of my thoughts on the subject of password protection here.
The first thing is to have a hierarchy of passwords. Two or three levels, as you like. The first is your main email. The password should be little complicated. Please for god's sake never give out this password to anyone. Avoid till the last limit, and if you essentially have to, change it the next moment you get access to it. Trust me guys, the only times I've lost my main email account is when I myself gave away the password to some supposedly"faithful "friends".
Going one step ahead, I was thankfully able to recover the password via, the Secret question/answer pair. The trick I use there is to keep a common, a bit complicated, secret answer. It has nothing to do with the secret question. This secret answer is only known to me and only me, (The main email password is at times known to my brother, for emergency uses, though for most folks it should be the second thing only known to you). This secret answer is common to all my services. This allows me to recover any password, using the secret answer, like a back-door key to one's house.
The second level of passwords are for little less important services like secondary email, personal workstations. These can be given to the near and dear ones as you might share few things over these services.
The third level is for casual services. The password should be trivial. It can be known to many folks and even if you lose any of the services protected my this password, it should not worry you. Newsgroups, workplace terminal logins, iPods and things like this enter into this category.
The second and third level passwords can be common to people depending on choice.
The first level password should of course consist of numbers. Since you are going to change it frequently, give the password some artistic touch. Write it down in a safe place, till you get used to it, as you might have a weak short-term memory and forget it the next day after changing it!
The second level of password should also consist of numbers, as most services now require numbers in the passwords.
There is another level of passwords which are very secured. The bank account passwords. They are generally more protected by the banks themselves, but one must be extra careful with them. One obviously does not give them away, but I've seen people do that also- I was once in a shop and there was a man on his phone. He was giving some travel agent his credit-card details. Trust me he spoke all that is required for me to buy from his account. So well be careful what you are revealing and where...
There is loads to write on this subject, but that's all for now guys. You are free to add your share in the comments section.
Key.
The reverse direction
So I was disturbed by someone constantly nagging me over phone and SMS one night and I wanted to sleep. So I pressed the phone off feature on my phone. I slept a peaceful night...
I woke up the in morning and wanted to check out all that I missed during the night and wanted my pending messages to be delivered. I turned on my phone and as is common with cellphone providers I had to wait till one by one all the messages were delivered to me over the next hour or so. Moreover, I was not sure if I did get all my pending SMS!
This brought me to a conclusion. What if SMS was not a push service, but a get service? Most tech-savvy folks would shudder at the thought, considering that they are running to even get email to become push. But I'm sure some of the old timers would love it. This difference of opinion has a solution, that, like email people should be allowed to choose if they want the service as push or get.
The advantages of SMS as a get service are many. I could finally be able to subscribe to those SMS information services like 'word-a-day', without worrying about the SMSs reaching me in the middle of the night, either due to the source server sending it then, or the SMS being stuck in the operator's network for hours(which is more of a problem).
Of course one can argue and say that - 'dude just tell your phone to not beep/vibrate to an incoming SMS and read all of them at leisure', but we all know that a pending SMS, always tempts us to read it. :)
I hope someone is listening to this.
Akshat
I woke up the in morning and wanted to check out all that I missed during the night and wanted my pending messages to be delivered. I turned on my phone and as is common with cellphone providers I had to wait till one by one all the messages were delivered to me over the next hour or so. Moreover, I was not sure if I did get all my pending SMS!
This brought me to a conclusion. What if SMS was not a push service, but a get service? Most tech-savvy folks would shudder at the thought, considering that they are running to even get email to become push. But I'm sure some of the old timers would love it. This difference of opinion has a solution, that, like email people should be allowed to choose if they want the service as push or get.
The advantages of SMS as a get service are many. I could finally be able to subscribe to those SMS information services like 'word-a-day', without worrying about the SMSs reaching me in the middle of the night, either due to the source server sending it then, or the SMS being stuck in the operator's network for hours(which is more of a problem).
Of course one can argue and say that - 'dude just tell your phone to not beep/vibrate to an incoming SMS and read all of them at leisure', but we all know that a pending SMS, always tempts us to read it. :)
I hope someone is listening to this.
Akshat
