Q. Over the past few days I had to enter my name and password twice when logging into my e-mail with Yahoo. I’ve had this basic account for a long time, maybe 5 years. I think it may be that my password is too simple.
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Should I change it? Should I try to contact Yahoo? Thanks for your input.
Judy [email protected]
A. That dual logon demand is just a blip on your machine, probably caused by a corruption of your computer’s automatic password-recall tool. It will go away when you are done following the heartfelt advice you’re about to get, Ms. B.
For goodness sake, don’t ever again keep the same password floating on the Web for periods of time like the half-decade you spent in peril of getting mugged by some vandal or hacker. Nobody has a hard and fast rule about how often passwords must change, but it’s best to think in terms of months–not years.
Which brings us to the reason nobody wants to be prudent about frequent password changes: It’s so doggone difficult remembering all of the secret words we cook up over time. You can fix this just by figuring out a secret strategy by which you can change passwords and still remember them.
One of the easiest tricks is to keep the same core to a password but change the first and final characters by some rule not easily obvious to short-term snoops.
For example, some folks just keep their main word–like coates–but then add a character or series of characters to the front and rear. For example, put the figure 1 in front, then the core and then the uppercase of 1, which is the exclamation mark, thus getting 1coates!. Use that one for a month or maybe a couple of months and then move up to 2coates@ and then 3coates# and so on.
Using numbers, special characters and the alphabet is recommended by security experts who may wince at my simplification. But it is hard for outsiders to guess and easy for you to remember. Just jot down whatever number you are at and then move up one later on.
When you’ve run the gamut from 1coates! through 0coates), you can probably start over, although it would be great to change the core.
You can make up your own rule for this, such as the elementary code-writing trick of moving each character one step up the scale. Thus coates becomes dpbuft. Make that 1dpbuft! in January, 2dobuft@ in February and so on. This way, you’ll be pretty secure but still have a changing password that you can recall into the future.
This little trick is hardly Department of Defense compliant encryption, but you’ve got to admit it is orders of magnitude better than sticking with the same Yahoo password for five years.
Q. I have successfully transferred my Internet bookmarks from a Windows 98 machine to a new Windows XP machine, but they now are subordinated under Favorites in my browser to the built-in XP favorites and inaccessible for editing.
Can you help before I go mad with exasperation?
A. There are two ways to edit one’s Internet favorites, Mr. P.: The one that is built into the browser itself, and a little known alternative that involves a special folder.
Your problem bothers a great many folks who migrate bookmarks from one machine to another and find that the self-serving links Microsoft builds in to Windows XP’s browser take precedence over the old bookmarks, which are relegated to a subfolder in the new machine’s browser Favorites.
To get at the source of this display, you want the Favorites folder. So right-click on Start and select Explore from the display. Use the Explore display to move to Documents and Settings and then to your user account, probably called Default User unless your machine is shared by others.
Whatever the user name, when you open its icon, there will be a star-shaped icon for Favorites. Click that one open and you will have a folder with all of the bookmarks listed in the same order as in the Internet Explorer Favorites menu.
But here you are free to use all of the tools for editing, file moving and renaming to restore your old bookmarks to the top of the list and relegate the XP batch to second-class status in their own segregated folder.
Q. I recently switched the Internet provider on my home PC to Comcast from AOL. Now when I turn on my PC, I get a message asking me for my network password. I don’t have a network and never had a network. How can I make this message go away?
Carol Kenzel @comcast.net
A. First and foremost, C.K., don’t confuse this prompt for a network logon with the Windows logon that lets various users share the computer. The prompt you are getting refers instead to logging on to a local area network of two or more computers.
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To stop the network prompt, you should shut down a feature called Client for Microsoft Networking.
Click on Start and go to Control Panel. Open the Networking control panel and then look for the icon for the local area network. Give that icon a right-click and then select Properties from the pop-up box that appears.
In the display this creates, there will be a group of four features, with Client for Microsoft Networking at the top. Remove the check mark from the box along side that entry. Now reboot.
If your machine still prompts for a network logon, go back to the same display and remove the check mark from the feature for Printer and File Sharing. Now reboot and the prompt will be gone.
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Contact Jim Coates via e-mail at [email protected] or via snail mail at the baiduhai, Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago IL 60611. Questions can be answered only through this column. Add your point of view at chicagotribune.com/askjim.