Managing information on computers (Part 2)

 

User accounts and passwords

All of your files, folders and settings are stored in your user account. You can password protect your user account to prevent other people from accessing its contents. Your username is commonly based on your name and you usually get to choose your own password.

To access your user account, enter your username and password into the login screen. Sometimes the username is selectable or entered for you, especially if you were the last user to login to the machine.

A user name and secure password login protect a computer

Passwords can be set to expire, at which point you will be forced to choose a new one. This is a security feature. Always choose a password that’s difficult for someone else to guess.

Choosing a password

A strong password is:

  • at least eight characters long
  • a mixture of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters and other symbols, eg !@#£$
  • not a real word
  • impossible to guess

A weak password might be:

  • the word ‘password’
  • your favourite colour/favourite football team/pet’s name
  • a single letter
An graphic showing the importance of choosing a strong password by choosing characters, numbers and symbols.

Stealing a password

The word ‘cracking’ is used to describe the process of obtaining a password by force. Hackers use programs that use brute force and dictionary attacks to crack passwords.

  • A brute force attack tries every combination of letters, numbers and symbols until it identifies the password.
  • A dictionary attack behaves in the same way but uses a list of words instead.

Do not write your passwords down and use a different password for each of your accounts. If you use the same password, a hacker that gains access to one of your accounts will have access to all of them.


Password protecting a file

It is possible to add password protection to many file types, eg word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

There are two types of password protection:

  • Password to open - the file cannot be opened without a password. Use this to keep the contents of the file private.
  • Password to modify – the file can be viewed but cannot be modified without a password. Use this to prevent other people making changes to your work.
Password protection settings make a secure file

Password protection remains intact if a file is renamed, copied or emailed as an attachment.

Only password protect files if you have a good reason to. If you forget a file’s password it is very difficult to get access to it again.