As I become more a disciple of cloud computing, I realize that my Gmail and Dropbox passwords have become tremendously important. It’s wonderful to have access to all my current files and drawings, real time anywhere I have my phone. Makes me look smart.

The potential downside, though, would be some yahoo getting access to those accounts and creating chaos. Lex sent me the graphic below which surprised me. I suppose I was thinking about a person trying to hack into my account by reading things about me online. I didn’t really consider computers working with random number generators at 1000 tries per second.

Their conclusion bears repeating:

Though 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess.

The take away from the XKCD article on password strength is that we tend to make passwords complex, which makes them hard for us to remember. We should make passwords long (and simple for us to remember), because every additional digit in the password hugely increases the strength.

So, ilovedebbysince1975 would be a pretty good password. It would also be true.