MAC Users Group 1-7-14

January 7th 2014

Larry has returned from the cold country and opened the meeting with introductions and conducted the gathering in his normal professional style.  A number of the attendees complimented him.  

Twice the number of people attended as the meetings late in 2013 which made for lively activity.  

Passwords

Kay Nation brought her MAC expert son to the meeting and he conducted a two hour class on constructing passwords plus a lot of other info.  We thank Brad Nation very much for his thoughtful work.  

Following is a website with some instructions about passwords

http://lifehacker.com/5631203/how-to-update-your-insecure-passwords-and-make-them-easy-to-use

Happy BD Anniversary Kay!

Some Instruction

1. Create Pswd System

   
   

a. symbol + 1st letter of a sentence

b. OIASWBMA or WWLAO (first letters of a song lyric) then add a suffix, prefix, or insert, maybe vowels; in Amazon.com for instance. aao Something you can remember.

2. Recover & Change old pswds.
   1. Clean out email inbox and note when you started cleanup so you can delete the messages confirming pswd changes.
3. Use a standard username if possible. I use my Airforce serial #. Some websites won't let you do this but it makes life easier.
1. Use foolish answers to security questions. If site asks for your high school, fib or make a phony answer. Say you didn't graduate from any high school. Or make up your own.
4. Change pswds. On the most important sites.
   1. Email,
   2. banking
   3. primary shopping sites

5. Keep pswds safe.
   1. Lastpass &
   2. keepass are examples of programs which save and encrypt passwords.
   3. Don't put them in the cloud if possible.
   4. Don't save them in your browser unless you use Firefox or Keychain which encrypts them
   5. Don't let the sites remember your passwords.
   6. Change them occasionally. 6 months to a year.
      
      
      
      
      

      Next Week

      Review of KeyChain.