Safe as ours is

About ten years ago, some hackers, possibly sitting among half-eaten pizzas in mummy’s basement, discovered that Mark Zuckerberg’s password for his Twitter and Pinterest accounts was ‘dadada’. It was generally agreed that the ginger wunderkind ought to have had more complex codes guarding the portals to his twitting and pinteresting (no idea) antics but, be honest, who amongst us is any good at that stuff?

The first Thursday in May is international password day, which offers us a chance to contemplate whether our grandma’s cat’s name is enough to keep our meagre life savings safe from harm or if we should up our game and spell it backwards and stick a question mark at the end.

There’s a constant tension involved to all of this. On the one hand, we know we should be glad that security measures are strict because they protect us from the baddies; however, it’s also true that squinting desperately at a selection of miniature photos trying to ascertain whether there’s a bridge hidden behind a lamppost can become a touch wearing after a while, especially if you’re in a hurry.

There is, of course, official online security advice which is offered to the public with the best of intentions but I don’t know anyone who follows it, except maybe Derek from IT who, inexplicably, actually enjoys this kind of thing. Surely nobody in the world changes their password every three months or uses a different one for each of the billions of accounts we need to log into. Hang on, come to think of it, no-one’s ever actually told me that that’s the case - I just presumed. Crikey, maybe I’m the only person on the face of the planet who’s used the same three passwords for everything for the last 20 years.

Anyway, let’s not think about that. In fact, I’d like to take the opportunity to offer a top tip which will not only enhance your personal security, but also impress people at parties: learn five mobile phone numbers on your list of contacts off by heart. It can be anyone, from the plumber to that bloke you met at a conference in 2001 and haven’t spoken to since, although, for the sake of diplomacy you probably ought to include your girlfriend’s number on there. Once you have these five memorised, they can be used in various combinations to form passwords (numbers correspond to letters of the alphabet). Plus, as a bonus, you can call the plumber anywhere anytime.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg’s grandma’s cat was called Dadada?

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