Sidebar: Password Taboos

Simply having a password longer than six characters is not enough to guarantee security. These frequently used choices are to be avoided at all costs:

• your name
• your spouse's name
• your pet's name
• your child's name
• names of friends, family, or co-workers
• names of cartoon or fantasy characters
• any "circular" shift of a name such as those above
• the name of the operating system you are using
• anything visible from your desk
• the street you live on
• your social insurance/driver's licence numbers
• birthdays
• well-known cult words like "wizard," "gandalf," "guru," and the like
• any user name
• any word which appears in the dictionary
• any place in the world
• any proper noun
• simple patterns like "qwerty" or "abcdefg"
• repeats of the same letter