Think your password is strong enough? Microsoft dares you to check out Telepathwords which reads your mind and tries to guess what you’ve chosen as your password. So the next time you want to open an account with a secure password, you may want to try it out on the Microsoft tool first.
To the user, Telepathwords functions in a very simple way. You just have to visit the site and type your watchword into the box provided for it. As you punch it in, the engine will attempt to predict the next letter. The alphabets marked with a green tick are the ones which could not be guessed, while the ones highlighted with a red X were predicted rightly by the tool. If you earn too many red cross marks, you should be rethinking your security key.
Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University have jointly built Telepathwords. It is intended to help people avoid using passwords that are vulnerable enough to let hackers steal their personal data. A strong key should ideally contain one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, a number and a symbol. But too often folks fool themselves into thinking something like P@$$w0rd1 or Qwerty123! is a secure watchword.
Secret questions aren’t as safe as everyone thinks they are
Several email services including Google and Yahoo use secret questions to permit users who’ve forgotten their passwords to reset them. But imagine having a security question going ‘What’s your favorite movie?’ and then having your favorite films listed in your Facebook profile. Previous research has indicated that people can forget their replies to such questions and in some cases, the right answers can be predicted in 5 attempts.
Here’s the link to the Telepathwords website for those of you who are feeling a little uneasy about the security of your online accounts now.