海角大神

There's no escaping the importance of computer security, as much as it would be nice to. A Business Insider report describes the aftermath of a recent hack on the software company Adobe:

This stash of 2 million passwords follows a massive hack on Adobe聽revealed in October聽in which a jaw-dropping 38 million user accounts and passwords were nabbed and posted to the 'net. That attack was so big that other website vendors were affected, because many people use the same user name and password for all of their websites.聽

Unfortunately, this hack isn't new (see also the , the , and the , for a tip-of-the-iceberg starting point), and as long as there is money or power to be gained from accessing other peoples' online identities, it seems unlikely to ever stop being a problem.

And while this doesn't seem like a parental problem per se, it really is 鈥� it falls under our "important stuff we need to teach our children" heading, right up there with crossing the street and why you shouldn't wear black shoes with brown slacks.

It's no longer enough to assume that because kids are young and wired, they're with it vis-a-vis good password discipline 鈥撀爐hat means (really) strong passwords, different passwords for different sites, and, if you must, hoard a list of all your logins and passwords, stashing聽it an incredibly safe hiding place, preferably in the real world and out of plain view.

And even then, you can't聽 assume just because you've got a password that you're assured of online security 鈥� like "n3xtb1gth1ng" or "qeadzcwrsfxv1331."

On the flip side of that are the passwords that people more often use 鈥撀爀asy to remember, and insanely easy to crack. Some of the Adobe passwords now in the hands of hackers (get ready to probably feel at least slightly better about your own password habits) "password," "photoshop," "aaaaaa," and "123456" (!).

Even relying exclusively on passwords like "Xh3@#..Lpmz0" won't keep you totally safe, so for the highest risk sites (a primary email or Facebook account) using a second layer of authentication is a great idea whenever possible (Google does a good job of this with its .)

Perhaps,聽with a solid generation of parental guidance, we can at least somewhat beat back the stolen password trend that leads to identify theft and (often) actual things and money-theft. Now, if only there were some way to effectively teach teens that whatever they post or send will inevitably wind up in the most embarrassing forum possibly imaginable...