The PasswordCard has a unique grid of random letters and digits on it. It has 8 rows and 29 columns. The rows have different colors, and the columns have different symbols. This is where it gets really clever. To generate a unique password simply select a row, then start reading the letters starting from any of the 29 symbols till the end. That is your password. The clever part is that any time you need to use the password, instead of having to remember a complex set of numbers and alphabets along with their case, you just have to remember the row color and the column symbol to get the password! It’s that simple! Here’s how you can set your Facebook password for example:
1. Choose a column with a symbol you like. Here, we go with the sad smiley as a reminder of how Facebook thinks about user privacy.
2. Choose a row. Here, we go with row no. 4 which is colored fluorescent green. Each row in the PasswordCard is colored as colors are easier to remember than row numbers.
3. Start reading the letters from the intersection. Thus our Facebook password is: Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN.
4. To get back our Facebook password, instead of having to remember the case-sensitive Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN, we just pop out the PasswordCard and recall “sad smiley – flourescent green”. Boom!
So there you go… complex, super-strong passwords without having to remember even a single alphabet or number thanks to the PasswordCard.
But there’s more. Losing your PasswordCard is not the end of the world. In the case that you lose your PasswordCard, you can regenerate the lost card with the exact same set of alphabets and numbers by going to PasswordCard.org and entering the unique ID you had at the bottom of your previous card. In the card above, the unique ID is c5e0fc8f25a5eb. Store this number somewhere safe and you can regenerate your PasswordCard any number of times. Can’t get any simpler.
What if someone gets hold of your PasswordCard? Will they be able to read off your passwords? No. Because they need both the row and column that you had chosen for each of your services to get the password and that row-column combination is in your head, not on the card.
How to strengthen your super-strong and long password even further:
Now that you are freed from having to remember the actual password, your mind now has the freedom to remember custom hacks that you can apply to the long passwords you get off the PasswordCard, to further strengthen your passwords. These custom hacks are simple enough to be stored in your head but increase the complexity for others by orders of magnitude when applied to the already strong passwords.
Here are some custom hack suggestions that you can use, using the example Facebook password we generated above, Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN:
Get the password off the PasswordCard as usual, but type it in backwards. So Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN becomes NALdFkVSQjrJm3vftnK. Typing backwards – simple hack that you can remember but when applied to the super-strong password strengthens the complexity much much further making it that much harder for hackers to get your passwords even if by some freak of nature they got your PasswordCard from within your wallet.
Some more custom hacks:
1. Type in the next letter or number for each of your PasswordCard characters – Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN becomes Lougw4nHshRTWlGeMBO
2. Invert the case for the alphabets – Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN becomes kNTFV3MjRJqsvKfDlan
3. Add the first letter of your name to the start or end. So Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN becomes WKntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN (W for Wythtech)
4. Combine the characters on the PasswordCard that are below your password with your password – so Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN becomes Kntfv3mJrjQSVkFdLAN8Lpc7yvW2NnVGNVAaZc. (8Lpc7yvW2NnVGNVAaZc are from the row below our password in the PasswordCard above)
The possibilities are endless. These custom hacks while simple for you to remember make it that much more harder for everyone else to find. This is a simply brilliant way to boost your security from the user end. Online services today take rigorous steps to ensure that their password based security system remains uncompromisable as long as possible by MD5 hashing the password as well as other custom techniques. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the weakest link in the Cyber Security chain is the weak password provided by users. If users provide them with these super-strong passwords, then the entire system gets a massive security boost making it a near impregnable wall for even above-average hackers and hacker teams.
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