With "Heartbleed" making headlines, passwords have been a hot conversation topic lately. At Village, though this is an ongoing conversation with students, we teach Common Sense Media's "Powerful Passwords" lesson at the end 4th grade before allowing students to create their own password for 5th grade. (Prior to 5th grade, passwords are assigned to students.)
This week, I've been doing more reading than usual about passwords and have a few resources to pass along to parents.
Build Strong Passwords
There are a number of blog posts with tips for creating secure passwords. Many people think, "How can I have a different password for each site? That's too overwhelming!" One idea is to pick a standard password then add to it using a formula. For example, let's say your favorite fruit is an apple. Your default password could be aPPl3. Your formula could be taking the first two letters of the website, capitalize them, and adding them to your default password in reverse order.
Let's use Amazon as an example. If we took the first two letters of the website, am, and used the formula of capitalizing the letters and adding the second letter the the beginning and the first letter to the end of your default password, your password for Amazon would be MaPPl3A. Using this same formula for VillageNet, your password would be IaPPl3V.
Practice Passwords at Home
My friend Jen Roberts shared a tip on her blog that I thought was genius:
This week, I've been doing more reading than usual about passwords and have a few resources to pass along to parents.
Build Strong Passwords
There are a number of blog posts with tips for creating secure passwords. Many people think, "How can I have a different password for each site? That's too overwhelming!" One idea is to pick a standard password then add to it using a formula. For example, let's say your favorite fruit is an apple. Your default password could be aPPl3. Your formula could be taking the first two letters of the website, capitalize them, and adding them to your default password in reverse order.
Let's use Amazon as an example. If we took the first two letters of the website, am, and used the formula of capitalizing the letters and adding the second letter the the beginning and the first letter to the end of your default password, your password for Amazon would be MaPPl3A. Using this same formula for VillageNet, your password would be IaPPl3V.
Practice Passwords at Home
My friend Jen Roberts shared a tip on her blog that I thought was genius:
One of the best things we did when our kids were little was give them a password to access our home computer. They didn't need that password as a security precaution, we used it as a teaching tool. We made our phone number the password. The kids learned the number very quickly and I know that they always know how to call me.
What Does Heartbleed Mean for You?
Here is a good infographic shared by VentureBeat with security information about which popular websites may have been affected.
Here is a good infographic shared by VentureBeat with security information about which popular websites may have been affected.
And finally, one more blog post to share: Using Heartbleed as a Teachable Moment.