kitchen table math, the sequel: Help desk - & another black mark on "technology"

Friday, June 19, 2015

Help desk - & another black mark on "technology"

If you are so inclined, could you and anyone else you know like these two Facebook posts?


Della Lenz, Irvington, NY

Thanks -- I appreciate it.

These are the 3 posts I've written about this situation:

Passwords on Post-its (superseded by next post...)

More in a second post

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Catherine,

It looks like a password got leaked at one of your local schools.

Bummer.

But your objection to storing passwords on Post-it-notes is a bit off base.

Leading security professionals (e.g. Bruce Schneier) have been recommending storing passwords on post-it-notes for about a decade. One example is here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_your.html

Of course, they finish this with the recommendation to "keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper: in their wallet" rather than, say, attached to the computer monitor.

But the problem isn't writing the passwords down on post-it-notes.

-Mark Roulo

Catherine Johnson said...

Hey Mark --

The Post-It story turned out to be wrong.

The kids were given the password.

At the high school, lots of kids have the password. The password for the WiFi system is the same as the password for the teacher section of the site.

The person who gave the password to the kids denies having done it, but given that so many students have the password, I believe the kids.

Basically, the kids are on the honor system.

The system is open, and nobody supervises the kids.

Catherine Johnson said...

That looks like an interesting site.

Post-its would be a bit of a problem for me.

I have .... jeez. At least a couple hundred passwords, I would think.

Maybe more.

Catherine Johnson said...

Which reminds me: I need to buy a Rolodex.