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PlaNet News & Views
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Posted on 5-2-13 Secure Speak
By AM,
The most difficult and important thing for humans is making oneself
understandable by partners, called honesty. The second most difficult and
important thing for humans is making oneself not understable by
non-partners, called security. A break in security is called intelligence.
In society at large, business and politics, intelligence is all and honesty
considered a character flaw. For society in the small, friends and family,
honesty is all and intelligence a threat.
The internet is society at large. On the internet you need intelligence of
others and non-intelligence of yourself, you need security, you need to use
secure passwords, you need to take personal responsibility and not rely on
others.
The internet is not your family nor friend.
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Some security tips:
1. The more characters in a password the more secure it is. In PGP (Pretty
good privacy) the prime number that is effectively the password has at least
1000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,->one thousand more 0s of
digits, yours need only have 12 to 20 characters to be difficult enough for
crackers to give up before cracking
2. Mixing numbers, letters and other keyboard characters to make
non-dictionary and `non-intelligible' passwords is good
3. Using different passwords for different applications is good
4. Changing passwords often is good
5. Recording passwords is bad. Every security/encryption system has a
dialectical nature, the more secure the system the more difficult it is to
use by its legitimate owners. My personal preference, after many years of
multiple password use on commercial communication systems is to keep a
record of passwords, but off-line, pencil and paper is good.
Encryption, encoding, cyphers and etc have accompanied humanity's evolution
in a parallel universe to communication and always will.
6. Get real, honesty and trust (which have to be earned) are what
distinguishes friends from everyone else and everyone else need not, must
not have `intelligence' as to your affairs. Use secure passwords and NEVER
communicate them except to yourself.
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