Type Your Password Out of Order for Better Security

Every 90 days Columbia College (my employer) requires we update our passwords.

I already have a very secure, and easy to remember, password that utilizes capital letters, digits, and special characters.

So I was a bit miffed to be required to change this password which I use several times a day.

Instead of changing the password entirely, I merely appended three special characters to the beginning of my password which the password duplicate checker recognized as different enough to pass as my new password.

However, I keep forgetting to type those extra three characters as I’ve been typing the same password for 3 months now.

Typing my Password out of Order Accidentally

Instead of deleting what I typed and starting over, I’ve gotten in the habit of hitting the home key, and adding those extra three characters.

I got to thinking about how this might actually help (albeit slightly) against over the shoulder password stealer’s and potentially key-loggers.

Every Little Bit Counts

While this is slight, picking a two part password which allows you to type part, then press home and append the remainder, might slightly increase your security.

Key-loggers are going to see the Home or End buttons as separate from your password, and people looking over your shoulder might not notice the extra key stroke and repositioning of the cursor.

Regardless, every little bit does count, and while I will keep doing this unintentionally with my main password for the next 90 days, I might do it intentionally with a few other passwords…

Thoughts?!

Please share in the comments.

And before someone else gets to flame this post, I’ll do it for them.

Flamer Comment: “ROFL! What a morron! You’re so not 1337! The keylogging software will compensate for this and the idiot looking over your shoulder will notice what you did?!”

Just thought I would get that out of the way. 🙂

Random Walker

Hilariously enough, when I used Google Images searching for a picture of a home key to make the graphic for this post, this image was included in the results: