<page xmlns="http://projectmallard.org/1.0/"
      type="topic" style="tip"
      id="user-goodpassword">

  <info>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>GNOME Documentation Project</name>
      <email>gnome-doc-list@gnome.org</email>
    </credit>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>Phil Bull</name>
      <email>philbull@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <credit type="author">
      <name>Tiffany Antopolski</name>
      <email>tiffany.antopolski@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <credit type="editor">
      <name>Michael Hill</name>
      <email>mdhillca@gmail.com</email>
    </credit>
    <desc>
      Use longer, more complicated passwords.
    </desc>
    <include href="legal.xml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"/>
    <link type="guide" xref="user-accounts#passwords"/>
    <revision pkgversion="3.4.0" date="2012-02-19" status="review"/>
    <revision version="14.04" date="2013-10-24" status="candidate"/>
  </info>

  <title>Choose a secure password</title>

  <note style="important">
    <p>
      Make your passwords easy enough for you to remember, but very difficult 
      for others (including computer programs) to guess.
    </p>
  </note>

  <p>
    Choosing a good password will help to keep your computer safe. If your 
    password is easy to guess, someone may figure it out and gain access to your 
    personal information.
  </p>
  <p>
    People could even use computers to systematically try to guess your 
    password, so even one that would be difficult for a human to guess might be 
    extremely easy for a computer program to crack. Here are some tips for 
    choosing a good password:
  </p>

  <list>
    <item>
      <p>
        Use a mixture of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols, 
        and spaces in the password. This makes it more difficult to guess. There 
        are more symbols to choose from, so more possible passwords would have 
        to be checked by someone when trying to guess yours.
      </p>
      <note>
        <p>
          A good method for choosing a password is to take the first letter of 
          each word in a phrase that you can remember. The phrase could be the 
          name of a movie, a book, a song, or an album. For example, "Flatland: 
          A Romance of Many Dimensions" would become F:ARoMD or faromd or f: 
          aromd.
        </p>
      </note>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Make your password as long as possible. The more characters it contains, 
        the longer it should take for a person or computer to guess it.
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Do not use any words that appear in a standard dictionary in any 
        language. Password crackers will try these first. The most common 
        password is "password" -- people can guess passwords like this very 
        quickly!
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Do not use any personal information, such as a date, license plate 
        number, or any family member's name.
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Do not use any nouns.
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Choose a password that can be typed quickly, to reduce the chance of 
        someone being able to make out what you have typed if they happen to be 
        watching you.
      </p>
      <note style="tip">
        <p>
          Never write your passwords down anywhere. They can be found!
        </p>
      </note>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Use different passwords for different things.
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Use different passwords for different accounts.
      </p>
      <p>
        If you use the same password for all of your accounts, anyone who 
        guesses it will be able to access all of your accounts immediately.
      </p>
      <p>
        It can be difficult to remember lots of passwords. Though not as secure 
        as using a different passwords for everything, it may be easier to use 
        the same one for things that don't matter (like websites), and different 
        ones for important things (like your online banking account and your 
        email).
      </p>
    </item>
    <item>
      <p>
        Change your passwords regularly.
      </p>
    </item>
  </list>

</page>
