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@ale183: "every one of you is way too paranoid. noone is actively trying to ruin your life!"
a) Could you help me get $50m back home? If you send me your bank details, I'll let you keep 10% of the money.
b) Yes, I'll buy that thing you are selling on eBay. But could you do me a favour? I'll pay you $5000 too much if you send me $4800 cash with the thing you're selling, thanks. Be sure to send me the cash as soon as you get my check.
c) Want to buy a business franchise? For just $1000 I'll sell you a way to make $1000s off naive fools on the internet.
d) I can get you a Green Card / job / visa. Just send me your id, bank details and just $25 and I'll do the rest.
e) If you send me $50 shipping fee by Western Union, I'll send you your $1,000,000 Microsoft African National Email Lottery winnings.
f) Your online account is locked. Fill this form in with your security details for us to release it.
g) The check is in the post / I promise not to <redacted> in your mouth / Of course I'll still respect you in the morning.
I give my passwords themes. They're all different and impossible to guess unless you're me. If I can't remember which password is used, I can just cycle through all of them in a matter of minutes.
It's not just about what someone might guess, but also about automated systematic dictionary- or brute force attacks in various forms.
An invented word *may* be ok if it's long, and a random jumble of words - probably long - is likely to be reasonably safe.
If a password is something like a dictionary word, name or frequently used thing ("admin123" or "P@55w0rd" for example), even in a changed form easily derived from such (e.g. "sch00l" or "school1" instead of "school"), OR if a password is short (generally less than 8 characters is worrisome, something really short like 3 or 4 characters is just plain dangerous), it is in danger of being cracked by an automated tool.
Using a long, complex password (meaning, mix lower- and uppercase letters plus symbols and/or numbers) will thwart such attacks. Including one or more spaces if supported makes it better still. A fairly easy way to come up with strong passwords is to think of 2 random words, then add at least one number and symbol in the mix. For example in my immediate surrounding I see blinds and a picture, so I can think of password "picture BLINDS#4", which is both long (16 characters) and complex (containing upper/lower case letters, a space, number and symbol), and will positively not be broken by guessing or automated cracking tools.
Ok, that concludes your security awareness training for today... ;)
