Passwords can be a pain in the you-know-what, especially since the recent spate of hack attacks proves that we are not very good at protecting our online data.
While there is not too much we can do to change how big companies operate, each of us try and make an effort to come up with a reasonably complex set of letters, numbers and symbols to keep online thieves at bay.
However, if you find this aspect of your online life hard, a 11-year-old can help.
Mira Modi lives in New York and has set up a small business at dicewarepasswords.com.
On her website, she states: "using a proven methodology, I build long, strong, memorable passwords using strings of words from the dictionary that I select using dice."
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Her method is indeed a tried and tested one. Diceware is a process that uses dice to select random numbers that are matched to a list of English words.
Here are a few examples:
"This whole concept of making your own passwords and being super secure and stuff, I don’t think my friends understand that, but I think it’s cool," Modi told Ars Technica.
"I wanted to make it a public thing because I wasn’t getting very much money," she added. "I thought it would be fun to have my own website."
All the enterprising student (yes she is in school) has to do when an order comes through is roll her dice.
She then looks up the matching words on the Diceware word list, writes it out by hand and mails to the customer.
So far, Modi has sold 30 passwords.
"Now we have such good computers, people can hack into anything so much more quickly," she said.
"We have so much more on our social media. We post a lot more social media—when people hack into that it’s not really sad, but when people [try to] hack into your bank account or your e-mail, it’s really important to have a strong password.
"We’re all on the Internet now." While Modi's method may not work for everyone, it's certainly a step in the right direction to better online security.
Kudos to you Modi.