Just came up with my father again.
He blames me that mother forgot her phone’s and Google password because I recommended against it being a word.
I mentioned encryption, “not necessary unless you’re doing something illegal”.
When mentioning lack of privacy with targeted advertisements, he said that he actually really likes them, because he bought a couple of things he wanted for years.
I don’t really have good arguments.
Compare it to free speech. Saying you don’t need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t need free speech because you have nothing to say. Eventually, through no fault of your own, there will come a time when you have something worth saying or hiding, and you will regret having surrendered your right to do so.
Another way to put it is: I don’t need privacy because my actions and intentions are shady, but because the authorities’ actions and intentions are, or one day will be. Allowing the authorities to invade your privacy and suppress your speech diminishes your ability to hold them accountable.
If you have nothing to hide why go into your bedroom to have sex when you can do it in front of the window where everybody can see? I mean it’s not like you are doing anything illegal? Right?
Right?
In front of the window? Outside!
I’m going to be real. I was part way through an explanation before I deleted it. What you are dealing with sounds like a situation where you simply won’t win by using logic. To continue to labor under the presumption that a good and logical reasoning will have an effect is just going to stress you out and achieve nothing.
Google password because I recommended against it being a word.
IT nerds help me out here, but I’ve been under the impression that the best defense against brute force attacks is a very long password, and the idea of sprinkling in special characters or numbers is outdated. Something like “iwenttothestoreandboughtabirthdaycake” is a more secure password than “$6jds_*WghP6”.
As far as I know, the thing is that randomly chosen words will be more secure because there’s simply too many words. However, sentences will be more predictable. And a single word will give quick access to someone with a sufficient wordlist.
Honestly, I don’t remember what exactly my recommendation was, just that I recommended against something quite simple (common word), and that she shouldn’t tell me or anyone else what it is.
Edit: but I am not a professional, so don’t use me for advice.
The difference for random Vs chosen sentences is when brute forcing a password (short of a few common or predictable sentences) the attack works by trying out combinations of different words randomly (if they’re even that advanced in the first place instead of using characters). That means any sentences you come up with, based on 3 things in the room, are so unpredictable that it doesn’t matter that they aren’t truly random.
You can also change the space characters. Use - then _ then + and repeat:
Instead of
iwentshoppingformilklastsaturdayuse can usei-went_shopping+for-milk_last+saturday. The amount of variables are just too high for it to truly matter.Now all you need to deal with is the banking login being so poorly designed it only allows a max of 8 characters or BS like that, in which case you’ve lost before you even started.
in which case you’ve lost before you even started.
And once I came across even better limitation. “Only English characters and numbers are permitted. Passwords are case-insensitive.”
OK, the last one wasn’t actually mentioned, but I just found out the case didn’t matter either.Yikes, you just know those are stored in a file called
passwords-donotsteal.txt…The fourth largest bank in America, Wells Fargo, has cases insensitive passwords
It doesn’t even have to be that long. 12-16 characters and it’ll be infeasible to brute-force for the foreseeable future. But unless you’re talking a high-value target like government, military, or executive suite at a company, no one bothers to brute-force anyway because there’s easier ways to gain access.
The biggest issue with password security is reuse and sharing. The most secure password in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if you use the same email/password combination across a hundred different websites, because all it takes is for just one of them to suffer a leak and now your credentials are in a dump with millions of others that can be bought for a song and a dance.
This is why it’s imperative to use 2FA for your most important accounts, because it can mean the difference between an attacker getting access and hitting an error page and trying the next poor fucker’s credentials instead.
But also, no one wants to try to remember a hundred different unique passwords so it’s also a good idea to use a password manager. Chrome and Firefox both have them built-in (note that Firefox stores passwords unencrypted on disk unless you set a master password!), but there’s also services like OnePass or Bitwarden that have stronger guarantees.
While being aware that leaking passwords and reusing them is a major risk, I was just asking about the construction of the password as it relates to being attacked directly.
But also, no one wants to try to remember a hundred different unique passwords so it’s also a good idea to use a password manager.
Absolutely. I recommended the notebook approach only because I think people of a certain mindset would be more open to it than a password manager, even if it isn’t as elegant of a solution. At the end of the day it still diversifies passwords. I’m vividly picturing my mom throwing a fit any time a doctor or other office wants her to fill out a form on a tablet instead of paper.
Is there something that would perhaps also work on Android? Also, how do you move the passwords from password manager into the fields? My problem with clipboard is that anything can read it. Of course, that means there has to be something to exfiltrate the data, but 1 problem is better than 2.
Most of those password managers are also available on android, and automatically clear the clipboard after 30 seconds.
But that’s a bit like plugging a leak when the tanks empty. If they managed to get a tool onto your device to read the clipboard, what else is there to get? They’ll almost certainly have a key logger installed as well, if not a full backdoor.
And that’s assuming they’ll even go through the effort of installing anything and not just using ransomware to brick your device.
The first thing about security is knowing who you’re defending against, and you’re not defending against targeted attacks by nation states (if you as an individual are, you’ve already lost). Your main adversary is spray-and-pray “script kiddies”, maybe the occasional private actor.
Clearing the clipboard also makes it less likely that you’ll accidentally paste your password in a text box somewhere when you meant to tap “Copy” and missed.
Password managers on Android (and frankly all platforms) actually try to avoid using the clipboard. They prefer the auto-fill service, which is intended for applications just like this. Unfortunately this isn’t working in all cases, but you can also set your password manager as a keyboard (temporarily), so it can directly input a selected username/password without anyone else seeing it.
Examples where I know this is the case are open source keepass options (Keepass2Android, KeepassDX). But I’d assume bitwarden and the like also work this way.
Keypass has apps which supposedly support autofill (I’ve never bothered with setting them up because I hate using a phone), but it might go through the clipboard. You can also set it to clear the clipboard so its at least not just sitting there indefinitely.
Bitwarden sold keys recently. Chrome and firefox are the same product now and neither should be allowed to hold anything important.
If you can’t get keepass going, I second pen and paper.
For my parents I save their passwords into my password manager whenever I set stuff up for them after learning the hard way several times.
Word based passwords are (typically) not more secure, but they’re easier to remember than random text, which makes them more secure than the lesser alternative, but not more than the better alternative: just as long, but fully random text stored and generated by a password manager. You’re right that substituting text with numbers or symbols is bad, those are easily cracked. But fully random text with symbols and numbers is the best.
Why? Badly remembered passwords are often reused and written down, sometimes even on the computer itself, in emails, chat software, text files. And any password created by a person inherently will fall victim to shortcuts, as humans are often just not as creative as you might hope, there’s patterns. Common words might be used, too little words might be used. With a dictionary attack that checks common words, the entropy of such passwords can become drastically smaller to the point they can be cracked very quickly, and you have to be aware of that constantly when using words. Using uncommon words or more difficult words can prevent that, but that’s typically not what people do, when “password123” is the best they come up with otherwise.
A notebook at home would suffice, but it’s not great for the same reason as word based passwords. A password manager can create passwords that are guaranteed to be entropically complex passwords that can’t be cracked basically ever. There’s no guessing, no shortcuts to take, no human laziness to slip in and curse the password to easy cracking. And it does so uniquely for every login you have. That’s essentially unbeatable.
A notebook at home would suffice, but it’s not great for the same reason as word based passwords.
I’m aware. I’ve explained it elsewhere, but having dealt with irrationally tech adverse older people myself, I’ve learned sometimes decent solutions they’ll actually use are better than great ones they’ll resist. I’ve found that any new software, like a password manager, no matter how user friendly and logical is treated with suspicion and disdain.
2 big things for me.
First is that everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone has something they want to hide. People assume “I’m not a violent person or a criminal” except yes you are, and you’ve done something. A great example is everyone in the US speeds, absolutely everyone. Does that mean you want every office to know every instance of you speeding if you get pulled over? So, yes everyone has something they’d rather not say.
Second is more of an example of you should be allowed to go places without everyone knowing. The example was about 5 years ago police used location data to find a person who broke into someone’s home. Problem is that the location data they used returned one person who happened to be on that street around the same time. They were riding their bike down the street. To the police they had the person there, they had proof, it was good enough. Except it wasn’t, and he obviously wasn’t the person they were looking for. Location data put him there though, and sold him out. So maybe not the best thing for whoever to know exactly where you are at any given time.
As for encryption, ask him for his porn history. If he gets upset, just say “why it’s not illegal”
I wouldn’t say everyone speeds as not everyone even drives. The biggest thing for me is that even if you don’t have something you’re ashamed of it could still be something you could be targeted for, like political views, disability or gender identity etc.
Everyone’s got something to hide.
For example, I like to keep my credit card number secret from criminals.
Tell him to leave the bathroom door open anytime he’s taking a shit in public then.
Sounds like a frog in boiling water to me.
“May I see your browser history?”
or “give me your credit card number.”
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Tell him that you’ve installed a keylogger on all of his devices and will be listening in on all of his phone calls and reading everything that he types into all of his devices going forward. See how he reacts.
In digital world, there’s no backdoor that only the good guys can access. The possibility of a bad actor accessing the same data that a court order would provide always exists. The true way of being safe against bad actors is being privacy focused as much as possible.
The problem isn’t always governments or police, but other bad actors. What if criminals get in? And they can be quite creative in how they can use personal information to extract money from their victims.
It is sadly something that some people will never understand. You could question why he does the things he does (closing curtains, using envelopes for letters instead of just using a postcard, having a password at all), but that would likely just make him feel attacked.
I may be ill and want to keep it from my family and work for as long as possible in order to complete and prepare some things. Privacy should exist for all under this type of scenario but it should not overpower the publics right to know when the public is affected (example…possible pedophiles or sex ring at the top levels of government).
Ask him why he doesn’t have a t-shirt with his card details on it
