computers & the Web

by NaNcy RoBeRts

Passcodes and Passkeys

Passcodes are a necessary part of life, and to a degree, the bane of many an existence.

Once upon a time, in the pre-cyber world, the game was all about keys, locks, and the sheer physical strength of a door, drawer, box or other enclosure that kept any but the owner of the enclosed space from accessing it. But those days also pre-dated, at least to a large degree, data as an asset. While that’s not entirely true, as things like social security numbers, birth records, even things like, say, a marriage license, or a chemical formula, as data, held a value and could thus be mis-appropriated for gain, this data was stored physically, and would have to be removed physically (or at least copied) to provide any value to someone taking it.

But once data became digitized, it could be taken digitally, without so much as, necessarily, a sign that anyone had broken into it until such time as it was used to gain access to a bank account, or take the personal information of hundreds or hundreds of thousands of users. Passwords/passcodes were the locking mechanism of digital “safes.” While at first just a recommendation, eventually many storage spaces insisted that a password contain certain elements that would make it harder and harder to, using computing power, simply keep trying until a password could be assembled. “Your password must contain an uppercase letter, two lowercase letters,