(Continued from my previous post) At my government agency, computer applications were given acronyms. There were COPS, TACACS, NITC, CAMS, SORS, ADPS, and SCIMS. And in the infinite wisdom of the government, they assigned User ID’s we could never have come up with on our own! I think I remembered that my CAMS ID would work for my SCIMS ID. This would have been fine but I couldn’t remember my acronyms either!
And if keeping up with 15 User ID’s and corresponding passwords was not enough, along came a list of rules for the length of each password and what had to be included in them. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that some had to be changed every 90 days, some every 60 days, some every 30 days, and some not at all. Some had to be 8 characters in length and some had to be 9. I will admit that increasing the number of characters above 4 did increase the choice of body parts and illnesses that I could use.
About the turn of the century (the 21st, not the 20th), I was up to a legal-size “yellow sticky” note full of User ID’s and passwords, which I carefully stuck on my computer screen. Unfortunately, this method didn’t work too well. I couldn’t see my computer screen, and I was repeatedly told that placing my “sticky” note posed a serious security issue. So, I decided to devise another plan to help me remember my passwords.
I remembered that many years prior (before I decided to use body parts and illnesses as my four-letter passwords) I had used the name of my dog, Spot. I was elated to come up with such a brilliant plan. I would use the names of my dogs as passwords! Nobody can forget his or her dog’s name!
We have a “Heel-a-poo” (red heeler-poodle cross) named Miss Lillie, so WHAM, in she went as a password. I quickly picked up two more dogs, Twister and Choco, and also used the name of my neighbor’s mongrel, Chaos.
I was off and running…never to have a problem with passwords ever again! My system worked great until three things happened. First, more passwords came along, second, passwords had to be changed and couldn’t be reused, and third, some passwords had to include numbers and even include symbols such as @, #, $, %, &,), or ().
I handled the additional password requirements by simply getting more dogs. Let’s see…there was Tiger, Sandbagger, Spike, Buster, Puddles, Dadgummit, Slickwillie, Beauracrat, Twospots, Threespots, Fourspots, and Nospots. Nospots was solid black, and I later changed his name to Blackie after 90 days when it was time to change my password. Ninety days later, I changed his name to Charcoal. I don’t know what ever happened to this dog. I went out one night to call him home, and he never did respond. I think he had an “identity crisis”…(to be continued…I guarantee this story has an end)
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The “we got dogs for adoption” people must love you!
Cheers,