Page 21 - Sojourner Newsletter-SPRING 2022-5

Vol. 99 Iss. 2 21

FROM THE WEBMASTER

PROTECTING YOUR PERSONAL PRIVACY

How many credit cards do you carry in your wallet? How many times do you reuse
the same PIN for accessing an account? For a 4-number PIN, there are 10,000
possible combinations.

Passwords are the key to protecting your personal information. When you use the same password on multiple
accounts, you are INCREASING your exposure to scammers, malware sources, and hackers.

I know what you’re saying (I’ve said it too): “I have too many accounts to have a separate password for each
one of them.” That’s why either keeping a list of passwords you are using versus accounts you have is a good
thing. Some people use what is called a “password vault” – a program that uses heavy encryption to protect
access to your master list of passwords. There’s just one teensy little problem with that one: If you forget that
password, you’re hosed! If you keep the passwords on paper, then you need to keep the paper with you when
you travel away from home unless you are VERY good at remembering critical passwords. This is the
proverbial “Catch-22” situation.

The National Sojourners website has the ability to create a VERY strong, VERY ugly, and VERY
unrememberable randomly generated password that will likely be uncrackable for a reasonable period of time.
When is the last time you changed your password? When you change your password, most people will avoid
creating a very secure one and opt for one they can remember easily.

FACTS: (this was the case in 1999 BEFORE we had Smart Phones and the current generation of CPUs in our
desktop/laptop computers)
By 1999 standards, today’s computers are what “supercomputers” WERE then. English words in a dictionary
can be hacked within 30 SECONDS! English words NOT in the dictionary (idioms) can be hacked within
ONE MINUTE! Compound English words (i.e., “littlelamb”) can be hacked within TWO MINUTES! English
words with special characters (i.e., CAR^ROT) can be hacked within 2-5 MINUTES! The most commonly
used password for a female is “SNOOPY, and for a male: STUD

Strong Choices:
Acronym of a common phrase (i.e., Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears=FRCLMYE) and will
take more than FIVE MINUTES to hack. Most hackers will give up and move on to another system.
Combining upper/lower case letters, numbers and special characters are good and will take more than 5
minutes to break, but you have to be able to remember them. Make it harder: change up your rules in a known
pattern (upper, lower, number, special, upper, lower number special). Pick your favorite book (let’s use Orson
Scot Card’s “Shadow Puppets” – page 213, first non-dialogue paragraph, first sentence: “Bean rolled onto his
back and lay there facing the ceiling.” (11 words) translates to: brohbaltftc – but then rotate (as in #3 above):
Br0Hba!TftC.

Remember, if something happens to you, your family will need to be able to access your accounts on your
behalf. WRITE THEM DOWN IN A BOOK and store them safely where family will know to look for them.

The theme for The Sojourner Summer issue is the Annual National Convention
(ANC). The key topics will include Awards, Bios, and Proceedings. Submissions

are due to hq@nationalsojourners.org by June 20