Let me begin by saying saying that it’s wicked cool that a Linkin Park band member uses .Mac for his email. That said, what happened to Chester Charlie Bennington is really awful. A cyberstalker messed with his life, all because of a bad password.
“The fans are the biggest reason we do what we do,” Bennington told me at a recording studio in West Hollywood. He was dressed in ripped black pants, black knee socks, and a long black coat with Lenin’s face stitched on the side. “If fans come up to me, I talk to them, ” he said, “I’m not an egg. I don’t need this protective wall.” So when he had to choose a password for his Mac.com email account, he just typed the first thing that came to mind, something short and easy to remember: Charlie.
Let this be a reminder to all of you that passwords, as it currently stands, are extremely important. They safeguard your most sensitive data. A quick rule of thumb for passwords dictates that they should be at least 8 characters, contain letters (lower and upper case) and numbers. Punctuation is good to throw into the mix, but may not be possible always. I suggest reading the whole article if you have the time to commit.
[Picture courtesy of Wired]
I read this article on this month's issue of Wired. Pretty freaky stuff. I agree that your password should be random words or letters with numbers. Most people use their spouse, child or pet names. Make it harder for them to guess. A great tool is Mac OSX's random password use. It's located in preferences somewhere (I'm at work in a windoze machine, so can't confirm exact location).
With that said, my Macworld password is macworld1. Oops!
As creepy as the stalking is, the behavior of Sandia National Labs is terrifying. I'm tempted to contact my representatives.