yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

How passwords and screenlocks help protect you


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

  • I could go on for hours about things to think about with passwords. Maybe the top two is that initially a password needs to be unique on every different site. And the reason for that is that if you share a password, if you use the same, you know, your kid's middle name as the password on three different sites and any one of those gets broken into, now the attackers know your password to use elsewhere. And, unfortunately for many of us, you know, there are these rules. You need to use capital letters and symbols and punctuation and numbers, and it becomes impossible to remember. So what many people do is they come up with one strong password and then use it everywhere. And that's really a bad idea because again, you're vulnerable if it gets reused. If any of those sites gets compromised, now it's out there in the open.

So instead, what we recommend is to use a password manager, which is an app that remembers and then auto-fills wherever you go. We have the Google password manager; it's built into Android, it's built into Chrome. But other OS makers, other, you know, vendors have their products. There's third-party ones that are both free and paid. Again, you know, you might get what you pay for, so don't just take anything out there. But if it's coming from Google, if it's coming from one of these big companies, that's much, much better than memorizing and reusing that same password in multiple places.

  • And that makes a ton of sense. I mean, when we talk about the passwords for different websites, but what about, you know, getting into your device or, you know, your smartwatch or whatever? You know, and now you have other options. You can, there's biometrics, your thumbprint, or your face scan and all of that. Does it matter or is it, hey, this is pretty low risk that, you know, some spy from another country is going to get access to my phone, so I should just, you know, it's just really to keep my kids out?

  • Yeah, so I mean, it depends. For most of us, what we're dealing with on device screen locks is that I left it in a taxi or a roommate or family member picked this up. And so then the threat model is pretty constrained. And it generally is okay to reuse, you know, to use a simple PIN or a biometric. Now you do have to think about who else has access to it. In my own household, I have very smart kids; they watch Khan Academy videos, they've learned a lot. And so if I set the same thing for my watch, my wife's watch, my tablet, my phone, and they shoulder surf any of those, we have that same problem of, you know, once it falls in one place it goes everywhere. For the most part though, I'm not that worried about that.

  • I have to say my oldest son, if there was like an Olympics for this, he would be a medalist. He can't help it. He knows he, but if someone, if you're in the room, he somehow knows exactly what you typed in. So anyway, yes, beware. And I think he's a force for good, but there might be—

  • Yeah, I mean, foreign spies and 10-year-old kids, like there's a, you know, interesting Venn diagram there.

More Articles

View All
Emotional Manipulation: A Masked Reality
Manipulation is everywhere. The social influence aimed at changing the behavior or belief of a person through emotional coercion. Emotional manipulation has always been prevalent in human interaction. It’s in all of our relationships. Companies use it on …
Math Magic
Hey, Vauce. Michael here. If you rearrange the letters in “William Shakespeare,” you can spell “here was I like a Psalm.” In the King James Bible, in Psalm 46, the 46th word is “shake,” and the 46th word from the bottom is “spear.” William Shake spear wa…
Graphical limit at point discontinuity
So here we have the graph ( y = G(x) ). We have a little point discontinuity right over here at ( x = 7 ), and what we want to do is figure out what is the limit of ( G(x) ) as ( x ) approaches 7. So essentially, we say, “Well, what is the function appro…
The Sun Sneeze Gene
I am a sun sneezer, which is also known as having the photic sneeze reflex, or the autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outbursts syndrome. Which basically means if I go from a dark area into somewhere that’s brightly lit - you know, like, looki…
The Berkshire Empire: Hidden Truth of Buffett and Munger's Success | 2023 Documentary
After winning a hostile takeover battle against Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett now fully controls the textile company. But he quickly realizes that he has made a grave mistake. Part of the partnership was buying what looked like cheap stocks; Berkshire Hatha…
Best Crypto To Buy Right Now | Kitco NEWS
[Music] So in this environment, Roy, give me your top DeFi or crypto investment. Is there an altcoin that you think has room to rally? Give me, in two sentences, your top investment in the space right now. “I’m going to disappoint you right now because I…