This post was picked as a WOW post by BlogAdda in the Write-Over-the-Weekend initiative ! :-)
Were you able to understand
the words in today’s blog post heading? If yes, then you definitely would have cracked
my first password 13 years ago. Because it was that simple.
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| Source : Google Images |
My parents bought our
first computer during my teenage years while growing up in the Middle East. When
I look back now it feels like a long time ago and maybe that’s the reason why I
fail to recollect if we had any passwords on our computer system then. What
with all the amazement and happiness to own a personal computer at home in the
1990s and with the sole purpose to only play computer games all day, who amongst
me or baby bro would bother to set a password? Answer – Neither of us.
In 2000, when I moved
to India for my higher studies, my maternal grandfather got me a computer on
rental basis to help me with my computer studies and project work. Since I was the
sole user of the desktop, setting a password was never on my mind. This is the same time
when the email trend was catching up and Hotmail, Yahoo turned out to be the
best of the lot choices for my friends. I decided to go with Hotmail and thus
began my tryst with the web world.
When it came to
setting a new password on my first email account, I was
clueless. What was it supposed to look like ? Or what was it supposed to say ?
Does it matter if all the letters are lower case or upper case ? Believe me; it
was like opening a dam only to release a flood of water. Think about setting a new
password; nothing but questions flood your mind. Add to it the necessity of
being able to remember the password since you are going to using it all the
time and you are done. You have comfortably made sure that pandemonium time is
turned on.
After staring at the
computer screen for a good 10-minutes, I thought of the first words that came to
my mind – my nickname. Ok, now what ? Having my nickname as a password
definitely seemed so simple. Anyone who has my email address and who knew me well
would get into my account in a single attempt. I decided to complicate it a
little. So I added my birth year at the end.
Now, wasn’t that clever
? As if adding my nickname as a password wasn't bad enough, I also added my birth year,
which by the way all my friends and family know by-heart. So
did I chuck the idea and choose a better one ? Nope. I had to make up my mind fast
since the NEXT button on the user registration page seemed to stare at me for
like forever and it also looked like it had magical powers – making me want to
finalize a password in a jiffy and move on.
When BlogAdda’s WOW
prompt for this weekend made me look back at my first password, it made me
realize how naïve I was and how my first password turned out to be one of the worst
possible passwords ever. But since it was a time when awareness of internet
security was not a priority, it didn’t matter.
So has my sense for passwords improved after so
many years ? Well, let’s say from nicknames to favorite destinations, from
birth years to life-changing years, from weird nothings to meaningful catch
phrases, I have had it all.
Yours' truly,
