From: "Geo." 

I pick passwords that mean something to me so I can remember them. As an
example I know all about the barkto thing that happened back around 1994 so
I might make up a password from that like

s-barkto.1994

If the year is wrong but I remember it as 1994 when it was really 1995
that's even better.

that would contain no words, but includes letters, numbers, and
punctuation. All upper, all lower, mixed case doesn't really matter as
checking alpha characters requires you try both upper and lower case
anyway. (think like a hacker, nobody is going to just assume a password is
all lowercase)

You can pick other things as well, for example nih.gov-12.2.2003 would be a
great password .

Geo.

"Judy Folkenberg"  wrote in
message news:3FCBF179.6DB192AB{at}mail.nlm.nih.gov...
> Just curious.  How do you all decide on passwords?  The reason I ask is
> that the Library just changed mail software (to much gnashing of the
> teeth--we're being forced to use Outlook and no one is happy) so we've
> all been assigned passwords until we come up with our own.  Mine is a
> mixture of small letters and caps mixed with numbers.  I hate it as I
> can never remember it.
>
> Do you have certain "systems" ie wife and kids's names, birthdates or
> adaptations of such, or taking such things as botanical terms or
> zoological terms (or the terms in any kind of exising system) and
> adapting them.  Or do you try and make passwords as complicated as
> possible, ie mixing keyboard symbols with numbers and letters?
>
> I'm certainly not giving out my secrets when it comes to choosing
> passwords!
>
> Judy
>

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