Ed-Tech mailing list,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Here are some suggestions that might make changing your CaneID password easier for you.
DISCLAIMER:
- These are just my personal suggestions.
- These are NOT official UM policy or even UM recommendations.
ASSUMPTIONS:
- The best password uses characters of different kinds.
- The best password is easy to remember but hard to guess.
- The longer the password the better.
SUGGESTIONS:
- Use a sentence, an entire sentence, for your CaneID "password."
- Make your password positive.
- After changing your password, use it repeatedly.
- Change passwords at YOUR convenience.
- Never change your password under pressure.
DETAILS AND EXPLANATION:
I just got my notice that I need to change my CaneID password. I always get this feeling of dread when my password is about to expire. I am afraid I will change it, forget the new password, and then get locked out of my account. Here are some tips to make the process easier. NOTE: These are just my personal suggestions. These are NOT official UM policy or even UM recommendations. These work for me so I thought I would share them with you. To the best of my knowledge they do not conflict with any official UM policies.
ASSUMPTIONS: The best password uses characters of different kinds. The best password is easy to remember but hard to guess. The longer the password the better.
- SUGGESTION: Use a sentence, an entire sentence, for your "password."
A sentence has upper and lower case letters and some punctuation, at least a period at the end. That meets the requirement to use different types of characters. If you can include some numbers, even better.
It turns out that almost all attempts to break into an account is brute force, these days. The person attempting to break in just tries all the one character possibilities, then the two character possibilities, and so on. The difficulty grows exponentially as the number of characters increase. So to make a password better, make it longer. A sentence can be very long, and still easy to remember.
I just changed my CaneID password. My previous password was "Marion is wonderful." (Marion is my daughter. My previous password dealt with my son, John.) I could type that password VERY quickly, since it is just three words long. While you might think that "Pq3e&7x." would be a better password than "Marion is wonderful." you would be wrong. "Pq3e&7x." only has eight characters, while mine had 20 characters. I could type mine very quickly, making it hard for someone to see. When I type "Pq3e&7x." I have to go slowly and look at the keyboard, making it easier for someone to get by looking over my shoulder.
Microsoft changed from passwords to pass phrases years ago. Some systems have a limited number of characters that can be used in a password, and that limit forces you to use one word. Some systems won't accept spaces. But CaneID accepts a sentence with no problem, and accepts spaces and other special characters with ease. Give it a try.
- SUGGESTION: Make your password positive.
You are going to be typing it a number of times during the coming months. Make it something that puts you in a good mood. Be happy. Be proud. If you start with a something like, "My wife's birthday is the 24th of June." you can make it positive just be adding an adjective: "My beautiful wife's birthday is the 24th of June." You are going to be repeating this sentence many times during the coming months. Make it something that engenders good feelings.
- SUGGESTION: After changing your password, use it repeatedly.
You are tying to unlearn the old password at the same time you are learning the new password. Usually the old password is in muscle memory: you just sit down and your fingers type it. You need to replace that with the new password. Use the new password as often as you can, in order to develop your connections to it. I immediately go to Umial.miami.edu and log on and off at least three times. Then I do that again in a few hours. Then I do it again the next day. By that point, it is usually anchored well enough that I use it fairly automatically.
- SUGGESTION: Change passwords at YOUR convenience.
Don't wait for your password to expire, change it either on a regular cycle, or soon after you are warned that it needs to be changed. For things that happen twice a year, we often use Daylight Saving Time to remind us. We reset out clocks with the "Spring forward, fall back" reminder. We change our mattress with the reminder to Flip it every fall and Spin it every spring. We replace the batteries in our smoke alarms, not when they run out but during some annual reminder: New Year, beginning of DST, end of DST, or something else.
How can we use this technique with passwords? You could change your password every time you change the oil in your car. That used to be every three months and would work wonderfully. In the new cars, it might only be every year and wouldn't do it often enough, so this only works for those of us with older cars. You could change your password with the seasons. March 21, June 21, September 21, and December 21 are the start of the four seasons, so change your passwords then. Or you could change your password the 1st of every month. That might seem too often, but think of it as creating a new self-affirmation statement for the month, which you will use as your password. The statement is the important thing. Making one each month would be good. And then you can use it as your password.
- SUGGESTION: Never change your password under pressure.
This goes along with the previous suggestion, to change your password at your convenience. If you under pressure, you are far more likely to forget the new sentence. Think about getting the password change notice a day or two before you are going to submit a major grant. Do not change the password right then. You won't have time to practice it. You won't have time to anchor it in your mind. Forgetting it will be traumatic if it interferes with submitting your grant. So don't let changing your password become urgent. Either take care of it early enough that you never see a notice to change it, or when you see the notice, decide when you take the time to make the change.
Bill Vilberg
