A Plain Hill Chronicle

I read Terms of Service; I try to stay aware of security concerns; yet I don’t undertake even the simplest of precautions. Well, the simplest, perhaps. Still, torn between privacy and convenience, I tend to look to the side, see a butterfly, and frolick away concerns of matters more important: like how I should stop using this, start using that, or become a crypto-hacker to protect myself from the man.

That’s not necessary, though. A few changes here and there, and I’d be more secure, if not perfectly safe. A couple minutes of my time and I may salvage months of effort should a data catastrophe occur.

This makes me think of ways we – as a society – could train these skills into the general populace. As Professor Robertson repeatedly assured class, like a stove, once you’ve been burned you’ll learn to beware its danger. Take some kids, tell them to write something or play a game, and when they are all focused, and halfway done, crash the programs. Do this once, then tell them what happened. Instruct them to save. From then on, for all assignments or activities, randomly crash the program; they’ll learn.

Teaching password security might be a tad more difficult. I suggest holding a secret, double-blind competition; the teacher tells the students to enter into a program their go-to password. After all students have entered their password, the program will try to blunt-force, or guess, the passwords entered. If no one’s password lasts beyond a certain date, all lose. Whoever’s password survives beyond that date, and holds out the longest, wins. After a victor is crowned, a new competition begins, into which students must enter their new go-to password; the winner must enter the same password as before. Thus the game shall continue until all students have a very strong password, and no victor can be crowned before the school year ends. This competition might cost a lot, however, taking electricity and computing power into account.