Screen Savers & Passwords

If you're using a Mac and it goes to the screen saver or goes to sleep, sometimes it will "lock."  When it wakes up, it will ask for your password to unlock.  It just wants to make sure that you're really you and not someone who sneaked up while you were out of the room.

If this feature is getting in the way, you can adjust it.

First, go to the Apple menu and select System Preferences.

Next, click on the "Security & Privacy" icon.

Lastly, make the adjustments you want.  This could include lengthening the delay so it is 15 minutes or even an hour instead of 5.  You could even turn it off entirely.

Making New Passwords

Passwords.  We all use them.  Most of us hate them.  Making a password that is hard for anyone else to guess means making it hard to remember, right?  Not at all.  You just need a system.

Here are three systems (with examples) that you can consider.  They will make your life easier and safer at the same time.

Methods:

1. Sing.
2. No vowels.
3. Shuffle two words.

Method #1:  Sing

Pick a verse from a song that you know well.  Then take the first letter of each word, perhaps with some shorthand.

Example #1:  "One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do" becomes "oitlntyed" or even "1itl#tyed".  This is a really hard to guess, but its very easy for any Beatles fan to remember.


Example #2:  "Mary had a little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow" becomes "Mhallwfwwas".  If you want to make it harder to guess, add punctuation with "Mhall,wfwwas."  (Note that "." is part of the password.)



Method #2:  No Vowels

Pick a short phrase from a song, book, or other memorable source.  Take out all the vowels and capitalize the first letter of every word.  You could also replace the vowels with numbers.

Example #1:  "No such thing as a free lunch" becomes "NSchThngsFrLnch".

Example #2:  "Bottled water" becomes "BttldWtr" (for no vowels) or "B0ttl3dW4t3r" (for number substitutions.)

Hint:  Most vowels have a number that looks loosely like it.  "a" = "4", "e" = 3", "i" = "1", and "o" = "0".  For "u", you could use "\" and "/" together, or "^", or something that you pick.  Just be consistent, so that you can remember it later.  You can even choose to just leave out any "u".

Method #3:  Shuffle

Pick two words and interweave the letters.

This method takes a little practice, but its easy to reconstruct your password if you forget it.  As a bonus, you can effectively have the same password on lots of different websites while reducing the risks of password-reuse.

Example #1:  "milk" and "shake" become "msihlakke".

Example #2:  "water" and "exercise" become "weaxteerrcise".  You can also add some numbers to the sorter word to fill in the empty spots.  For example, "weaxteerrc1i2s3e".

Example #3:  Pick a word for your new, universal password system.  Then interleave it with the name of the site or service.  For example, if your word is "phone", then your Amazon.com password would be "pAhmoanzeon" and your eBay password would be "pehBoanye".

Passwords

Worried about your password?  Think you have a good one?  Either way, I recommend spending two minutes checking out the advise from security company ZoneAlarm.  It could save your bank account some day.