Passwords
Passwords are the easiest thing to have and quite worth the effort.
For Windows 95/98 and alike operating systems passwords offer only limited protection. You can easily bypass them. They are convenient though! You can store your personal settings for working on your system in your user account.
On Windows NT/2000, UNIX based operating systems like LINUX and other professional operating systems user-names (also called logon-names or accounts-names) are required and your No. 1 choice of data corruption protection. Without a valid user name and password, you simply cannot access the computer. Furthermore, data access rights can be controlled down to the level of a single data file. In other word, you can even restrict the access to sensitive information to defined users of the computer or (local area, virtual private) network.
A Note on Windows NT/2000
Windows NT/2000 as members of the Microsoft family of operating systems support two hard-disk file systems. FAT (File Allocation Table) and NTFS (NT File System). They "define" the way information is organized, stored and retrieved on your hard-drive. The FAT-system basically is a DOS (Microsofts first operating system) file system and does not offer the possibility to define and control user access rights to your data. Its outdated and should be replaced.
Please check your Windows NT/2000 system to see which file system is used. Find the instruction to check your system and if necessary convert your file system to NTFS here.
Good/Bad Passwords
Even though passwords offer powerful security protection, also with regards to the internet connection of a computer, they are quite often not used or applied in a way rendering them useless.
If your name is John, your user-name is John and you use John as password, you may forget about it altogether. It's the first password an intruder would try; and this attempt is embarrassingly successful. Passwords like John1, John10 or John007 etc. are only just better.
Reasonable Passwords
Reasonable passwords are
at least 6 characters long
contain at least one number (0 - 9)
do not contain names of persons, characters, cities, etc.
its not hard to remember passswords just put your mind to it and you can remember them easily
You can also come up with an association chain like
“AMD is no.1 of processors ”
and your password would be:
Ain1op
looks professional but its not hard
Just don't use well known phrases ("To be or not to be")
Don't repeat a character more than once
Spread your letters across the alphabet
Don't forget: passwords are case sensitive
Passwords on the Internet
Never, and I really mean never, use the same user-name/password combination on the Internet, which you use on your home or business computer. If an Internet site requires you to register or join asking for a user-name and password, use an artificial or funny user name and a password, which is different from the one you use on your computers.
Some of these site will send you an confirmation e-mail stating your username and password. E-mail, if it is not encrypted, is about the most unsecure form of communication! It runs through a lot of computers and a lot of people can potentially have access to it. If someone does, he/she sees where it comes from and where it goes to together with your username and password.
Finally
Don't store your passwords in a file on your computer! Write them down and store them in a safe (place). Once you don't need them written down any more, eat the paper up or burn in like you should flags.