Passwords
There are several rather simple ways of "guessing" one's password:
- trying all numbers 0 through 999999 - on a fast computer it takes just a minute or two,
- trying all popular first names and surnames - it takes a few minutes,
- trying all words in a dictionary, e.g. words in a spelling checker of an editor like MS Word - also a matter of minutes,
- etc.
Therefore, make your password a mixture of small and large letters (password checks are normally case sensitive) and digits, at least 5 symbols long. The number of all such passwords is the number of combinations of 62 possible characters to the power of at least 5, about a billion. To test a billion possible passwords on a very fast computer would take hours - rather expensive way of "guessing" a password.
No matter how well a password is chosen, it might be lost (when written on a piece of paper) or stolen by someone present at the time of your logging in, or by a program (virus, worm, etc.) that records sequences of your key strokes on the keyboard, and sends them to another host on the Internet. To counter such a threat, change your password reasonably often.
To change your password, click Login in the menu, and Password in the top menu.