User Names and Passwords
User names and passwords are sometimes confusing to computer
users. They are different and serve different purposes. The user
name is the name you are known by. The password is a security key.
User Name
A user name is your name or nickname at a particular location.
You may, however, have different users names in different places.
You may have one user name at your ISP, another at E-Bay, yet
another at Yahoo or AOL. Each place knows you by a different user name.
When you go to a web site that asks you to register, you’ll create a
unique user name. While you can try to get the same name all the
time, you won’t always be successful. If someone else has that name
(at that site), you have to come up with another.
The
phrase “user name” is sometimes called User ID. AOL and CompuServe call user names Screen Names.
At
many web sites and at your ISP, your user name is the beginning of your e-mail
address. For example, if my user
name at Hotmail is “rabble”, my e-mail address would be
rabble@hotmail.com.
User
names are not generally case sensitive. While
on some sites (AOL and CompuServe) your user name may include spaces, the spaces
are eliminated in the e-mail address.
Passwords
While
your name identifies you, your password protects your information.
In order to access your information, you must have the user name and
password both. The user name is public
information. Your password is a private key known only to you.
Think
of your user name like your home address. It’s
public knowledge. Even so, to get
into your home, you must have a key. That
is not public. You only give your
key to trusted friends or family. The
key is like your password.
When
you register a user name, you’ll be asked for a password.
Passwords do not show up on the screen when you type them.
They generally show up as a string of asterisks (*****).
When you are creating or changing passwords, most sites require that you
type the password twice. Since you can’t see what you type, they want to
make sure you typed it correctly.
A
good password consists of a combination of 6-9 letters and numbers.
It’s easy for you to remember, but hard for someone else to guess.
Examples
of good passwords may include:
- The street
address where you grew up
- The initials of
your children/grandchildren, along with the number
- Word or phrase
relating to a hobby
- A play on words
- A pattern of
keys on the keyboard
NOTE:
PASSWORDS ARE CASE SENSITIVE. This means
that capital letters make a difference. If you make a password with some
capital letters, you must do the same when entering the password. For example, Sparrow32
is a different password than SPARROW32 or SpaRRow32.
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