Password Information

Choosing a good password for University and Engineering computer accounts is very important. It is one of the things that ensures email and computer accounts are not compromised.

The use of a bad password may allow some unscrupulous person to use accounts to modify, corrupt or destroy files. He or she could also send email messages using the compromised account, which could cause untold problems for you.

A good password must not be something that can easily be guessed by a person or a program (a pet's name, for example). On the other hand, it must be something memorable so that you are not forced to write it down.Hackers tend to guess passwords or use programs that guess passwords using frequently used themes. If you avoid these themes, your account will be much more secure.

And passwords should be changed frequently.

What you should NOT do

• Don't use your login name in any form (as-is, reversed, capitalized, doubled, etc)
• Don't use any form of your first or last name
• Don't use any information that is easily obtained, such as license plate numbers, telephone numbers, pet's name, car model, etc.
• Don't use a word contained in any dictionary of any language, spelling lists, or other lists of words (acronyms, sequences of letters like 'abcdef' or 'qwerty', place names, car names, etc.)
• Don't use a password shorter than six characters, or with only alphabetic characters or only digits.

What you should do

The Engineering network, because it is multi-platform, must have some restrictions on how a password is created. When creating or changing a password, please follow these instructions as well as those suggested above.

• Passwords must have from six to eight characters. The longer the better. You can't choose a password over eight characters because Windows computers will not accept it.
• The password must have at least one number within the password. However, it should not contain only numbers.
• And it must have at least one special character from this list:
  ~ ! $ % ( ) _ + - = { } [ ] \ : ; , . ? ^ * /

If you are having difficulty in logging into your account, it may be because of these common problems with passwords.