This is Edward Snowden’s Advice to John Oliver for an Unhackable Password

We all struggle with passwords, finding the balance between convenient and security (I use 1Password but Snowden’s approach is likely as if not more effective and free):

Edward Snowden has bad news for you: Your computer password is probably terrible.

In a web extension of his Sunday interview with John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, Snowden laid out the bad news: “For somebody who has a very common 8-character password, it can literally take less than a second for a computer to go through possibilities and pull that password out.”

Less than one second.

“My password is five characters,” Oliver said. “That’s not a joke. That’s bad, right?”

Snowden agreed it is really bad.

So what should people do for their passwords? While Oliver’s suggestion of “limpbiscuit4eva” was a flop, Snowden had some helpful advice: Forget about passwords and go with “passphrases,” or phrases that are long, unique, and thus easy to remember. Like “margaretthatcheris110%SEXY”.

A computer would never get it, and you’d never forget it.

And if you don’t like the Margaret Thatcher version, you can always pick a name closer to your values and ideology, or outside the political realm.

This is Edward Snowden’s Advice to John Oliver for an Unhackable Password