COMPUTER PASSWORDS: IS THERE A BETTER WAY TO SECURE YOUR DEVICES?

Google's new passkey software offers a biometric replacement for old-fashioned passwords. So can we finally forget about having to remember all those sequences of numbers, letters and symbols?

- DR PETER BENTLEY

WHAT’S WRONG WITH PASSWORDS?

The very first digital passwords were invented by an MIT professor in the mid 1960s who needed to give multiple users private access to the same giant computer. Passwords soon became ubiquitous in our computers and it’s easy to see why – a simple, memorable word is quick and easy to input when you want to gain access to your computer.

But that’s also the problem with passwords. A simple, memorable string of characters such as ‘password’ or ‘123456’ is easy to guess, and when hackers ask their computers to guess millions of passwords a second, even complex words and codes can be broken instantly.

The best way to thwart this kind of hacking is to use long passwords, as the number of combinations (and difficulty of guessing) increases exponentially with length. For example, ‘My!_Garden_ ShedWith13Daffodils#and17Tulips_Outside’ is considerably harder to guess than ‘MyPa55wo2d!xxx’.

Nevertheless, it’s recommended that you use a different password for every new application, so that if one is exposed by a hacker, none of your others will be at risk. Unfortunately, today this has become unfeasible as everything from Netflix to your bank requires a password – it’s not possible for us to remember hundreds of different codes.

Our solution? We write the passwords down, often on sticky-notes stuck to the monitor or keyboard, or on a pad kept in a nearby desk. Alternatively, we use password manager apps that remember everything for us but provide a one-stop-shop for hackers.