Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 04/02) - Passwords are nothing new. They are as old as civilization, as ancient as sentries posted at the palace gates to keep out the Huns.

Yet, one thing has changed. There are more passwords used in our society than at any time before, growing significantly the last 10 years as the information age took off and banking and security systems became more consumer-oriented.

Local business owner Vicki Tompkins says she changes her personal identification numbers (PIN) for her bank accounts about every six months. One can never be too safe.

"I use a very complicated system of numbers," says Tompkins. "Scientifically proven never to be revealed to anyone but myself."

"Even myself sometimes," she adds with a laugh.

Tompkins doesn't own a personal computer, which at least keeps the password count simple. But Markham Breitbach, a network specialist with local computer services firm SSI Micro, has close to 50.

"It just adds up real quick," says Breitbach. Passwords are stock and trade in his line of work.

"By the time you start counting alarm codes, your voice mail, telephone answering machine ... everything has a password."

Breitbach would applaud Tompkins' decision to change passwords every few months. He says unlike in the movies, computer passwords codes are not that simple to break, but there are ways to do it.

"Brute force" is a hacking technique where one creates a program that basically reads through every word in the dictionary until it finds the appropriate password -- if yours happens to be an actual word.

"If you're using a really obscure password it's a lot harder for someone to figure it out," says Breitbach. "If you use one from the dictionary it could eventually get found out."

There are still some, however, who resist the onslaught of technology, preferring old-fashioned service over convenience.

"Well, number 1, I don't have a bank card," says longtime Yellowknife resident Shorty Brown. "I don't have time for any of that stuff."

Brown notes with certain irony that with so many people using bank cards these days, the lines sometimes seem longer at the ATM machines than they do at the bank teller.

"Sometimes you got to wait, but I see a lot of people waiting in line by those machines."