University of Utah

ATTENTION INTERNET USERS

Protecting your Internet account is an important responsibility, not only for your own protection but for the safety and security of the information and data stored on computers throughout the Internet. You may be thinking, "there is nothing of importance on my account, what harm could be done if someone got my password?" A great deal of harm is the answer, as demonstrated this past summer when a student left his account unattended. His account was used by someone else to send threatening messages to political figures, and much more.

While your account may have little information, or data that no one else might want, what your account DOES have is access to the Internet. This could provide a route to someone with malicious intent to damage data, information resources and your reputation!

So, how do you protect your account? Mainly via your password. Here are some tips on protecting your Internet account and password:

Never give your password to anyone!
Change your password frequently. Many experts recommend that you change your password at least once a month.
Do not use a word that can be found in the dictionary as your password. It is easy for someone to run a list of dictionary words against your login to get into your account.
Combine words and numbers to form your password, or replace some letters within your password with numbers.

Here are three ways to change your password:

From the unix shell, type "passwd".
From the main menu, type "!passwd".
Run Pine (option "m" on the main menu, which is an e-mail program). Go to setup from the main menu. Look at the bottom of your screen to find the option to change your password.

NOTE: The reason for the "!" in option 2 is to tell the menu to run Spasswdt from a shell. You can run any unix command this way.

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This page was last modified on March 1, 1997.