When I was surfing the net, I heard a voice. It was a man's voice. I paused the music player and removed my headphones. I was still hearing it and it was nothing but my name. I have heard this voice before. The voice belonged to none other than my sub-ordinate, seated opposite to me. OK cool, I just thought of giving a suspense novel introduction. He wanted to check his mail. So I told him to come over to my desk and check it in the laptop. Let us resume the story later; before that I just want to clarify the readers who expect some technical stuffs or someone who expect a notch in the story like that comes in Dan Brown's, I am so sorry, this is not that you wanted. When I was thinking of an attractive title for this post, the picture of the book "The lost symbol" came in my mind. Hence, this title. I can clearly hear, how much you are cursing me for this post, now itself.
This is about passwords and people. We do use lot of mail accounts, social networks, online banking, online shopping, etc, etc which asks us mainly two important things. One is user id and another one is password. This post is just just about them. Let us go back to the story now. He as usual typed his user id and started typing his password. I was controlling myself, not to peak at what he is typing. But who wins, its the devil again. I noticed him typing all numbers starting with 9 and typing some 10 digits, all numerics. Now, you all would have known what is his password. For those who couldn't guess yet, it was his mobile number. So i started thinking about various people I know and their various kind of passwords. The entire topic sounded interesting to me, its about their passwords, their key to their private world. We love to know what happens in next house, apartment and so on. Basically, its the curiosity, which even makes you reading this now, with much more attention. Here I am going to share about my knowledge on various kind of passwords and people.
This very first kind, i.e, the ones who keep mobile numbers, their date of births, their date of marriage (it cant be a man any day), their spouses/children date of birth, their vehicle no (can be mostly man) are those newbies to this world of passwords. They will kind of persons who seldom use those accounts or occasional users I must say. We can include those persons who keep their brother's name, sister's name, mom's, dad's,doggy's, etc also in this category. They wouldn't have been hacked by anybody till then or even won't mind being hacked also. There will be nothing interesting their accounts too, unless its a bank account.
The second kind is those, who use their hidden brains to keep a such a safe and secured password which they themselves cannot recollect to log-in back. Then, they will as usual press that glorious option called "forgot password" and do all those irritating procedures to regain access to their respective accounts. This happens to normally many people, when it is not their primary id. For example, your company's messenger/mail password which you will set once, select "remember me" option and go on like that for months together without even switching off your PC. And one day will come, when you will be breaking your head to get what did u kept. I think, we should it as "self check".
Then comes the most interesting group, who keeps their password as their name of loved ones. It could be anyone, some heroine / hero, school days crush, girl / boy friend, etc. They believe typing those names build some sort of telepath(et)ic connection between them. It gives a satisfaction to them,some sort of comforts for their lonely heart.
There is one category, who is so annoyed after overcoming so many self checks jumps here which is called "all is one". All locks are opened by single key and when you forget your key, it will be funny. When your key becomes a open book, it will be even miserable. Few more more here, choose a password in such way it doesn't fall prey to those websites which compels you to use alpha numericals, or minimum 6 or 9 strings etc. Again using hidden brains, they add 123, 246, 786 or most famous 143, 007 strings at the end to get it pass through all gateways. I wont complaint, because, I also fall in such a category. There is one more group which goes one step more than this, who replace 'a' with @, or add some special characters to make it unbreakable. Now, let me talk about few case studies.
One friend of mine, keeps his passwords as things like mobile phone model no, his current project name, a IC part no,etc. A friend of mine told me once, that his passwords are names of chemical compounds. I know one guy, who keeps different password for every account. No one repeats itself. All unique and he remembers all. Best part is, he will be trying at-least four or five passwords to unlock his own PC. Then, I know a large community who keeps their passwords as 'allowme', 'permitme' 'itsme' 'iamtheboss' 'mydoor' etc. I am wondering when will that day come where you authenticate yourself with some sort of biometric system to avoid all these password conflicts.
This is just about passwords. Forgotten user-id stories and its various categories are plenty. But, I am not so jobless as you are now. Hence, I am finishing this crap right here.
So whats your password story ?
