You must remember this

Paralyzed at your personal computer or stymied at the ATM because you forget your password? You’re not the only one who finds your memory is turning to mush, writes David Graham

Ever since Ali Baba uttered the world’s most famous password, people have been obsessed with secret codes, those magic formulas that let some people in and keep others out.

Certainly “ Open Sesame!” gave Baba all access. But in the modern world, the task of inventing and then remembering passwords, for computers, cellphones, health club lockers and home security systems, has many of us stymied as we stand in front of bank machines or paralyzed at our personal computers, unable to recall our own vital stats. Throw in a few phone numbers, a postal code and a video store password and usually reliable memories turn to mush. We’ve got a generation of young, urban professionals suffering from too many “senior’s moments.” And it’s getting worse.

Professor Michael Saling, head of neuro-psychology at Melbourne University, believes busy people are getting more forgetful and passwords and security codes are the first to go. He calls it “ busy line syndrome.” James Harding, the owner of 24 Hour Geeks in Toronto, says it’s an epidemic. He advises clients to create one terribly complicated password and use it for a variety of applications. He estimates 75 per cent of computer users do not have secure passwords at work or at home. He says his own eight-digit password composed of capital letters, lower case letters and numerals would take a worm or a hacker eight weeks to crack.

Harding is astonished by the number of people who fail to apply security measures to their passwords for fear they won’t remember them.

“ You’d be surprised the number of people who use their children’s names, or just ABC- 123 or “ qwerty” ( six keys on keyboard’s top left row) and those who write it down and leave it under their keyboard.” To thwart the efforts of criminal code crackers and identity thieves, security experts want our passwords to be longer, more complicated and more random. And they want them changed regularly. They warn against using popular movies, titles or phrases. We’re not to use personal information such as birthdates or anniversaries. They don’t even want words found in dictionaries or borrowed from other languages. Apparently it takes current code-cracking software mere seconds to run an entire dictionary past a gateway. It is a constant battle to stay ahead of malicious hackers.

In the best possible world, we would use “ strong passwords” with at least eight characters including alpha-numerics and symbols and we’d use different passwords for each account that needed protection. And we’d change them regularly. The complexity of a password should be increased according to the “ value” of the information, we’re told.

Certainly there is password software that can help. But for most people that’s just more technology added to the pile.

“ It’s a miracle we can keep that many numbers in our heads and not lose our minds,” says Toronto real estate agent Collette Skelly, 53, who doesn’t claim to have a remarkable capacity for remembering such things . . . until she does the math. To her own surprise, Skelly keeps at least 200 various codes, passwords and phone numbers in her head. As a real estate agent she has “ lock box” security codes as well as the phone numbers of lawyers and home inspectors all on the tip of her tongue. “ There’s even a code for the company photocopier.”

Skelly emphasizes that a strong memory is an important part of her job. “ We were told to keep all our passwords totally secret and not to write them down. We were told to keep them in our heads.”

Skelly says that if she makes a concerted effort to remember something, she usually will. “ I decide in advance ‘ I will remember this person’s name,’ ” she says. She uses the same determination for meaningless combinations of numbers and letters.

“I visualize it or I pin it to something that will trigger my memory,” she says.

Certainly some people are born with extraordinary gifts of recall. There are individuals, even whole families with eidetic ( photographic) memories. But those less fortunate are looking for help.

Laziness also plays a role. People who fail to change their Internet server’s default to a personal login and password fall into this category. These days that’s just not good enough. People are turning to programs like Mind Tools, a learning program that helps people master miraculous feats of memory like those executed by magicians.

“ Mnemonic techniques are phenomenal but they are difficult to learn,” says Colin MacLeod of the

University of Waterloo

psychology department. Mnemonics is a set of learned techniques used to trigger memory. It uses many systems including rhyming and visualization. “ Thirty days hath September” is one example of a popular mnemonic. Some are turning to drugs they hope will improve their memory, a kind of Viagra for the brain.

Increased levels of vitamin E, for example, have been associated with better memory performance.

Others are trying purported brain tonics like ginko biloba to improve their memories. MacLeod, who has studied memory for the past 30 years, says drugs are not the answer. “ It’s like someone looking for a drug to help them with their golf game,” he says. “ What helps is practice.” MacLeod says our brains, unlike computers, which have a finite amount of space for memory, have an almost endless capacity for storing information. “ I think that because the brain looks small, people think it can only hold so much information. It may be just three- and- a- half pounds but there are billions of neurons, so there’s lots of room.” MacLeod believes there are ways to improve password memory. Mnemonic techniques work, he agrees. But he laments the systems are often difficult to learn and take a lot of practice. Chunking information is a useful memory management skill. For example 8302739 is more difficult to recall than 830- 2739.

Visualization techniques can be effective for some people and developing patterns within the password can also help. For example, in the simple code 2- 7- 9, the pattern would be two plus seven equal nine. But he’s got one final trick up his sleeve. “ Vocalize the password. Say it out loud. Even sing it. Add rhythm and a beat. Use a high and low voice.” By moving your lips you are incorporating motor learning, says. “ The more systems that are involved the better.” Not convinced? Think of the Pizza Pizza phone number. And one last thing:

Researchers have determined that learning something just before sleep often results in amazing recall.

In his book Your Memory: A User’s Guide

( Firefly), Alan Baddeley writes, “ subjects who learn material immediately before going to bed show better retention 24 hours later than subjects who learn in the morning and then indulge in a normal day’s activities.” The bottom line is, how well you remember something is directly related to how well you learn it. So take your new password to bed and practise it out loud. Then sleep on it.