Password Evaluator/Checker

WARNING: Using Password Checker with actual passwords indicates that you trust this web site and plain text transmission over the Internet. One way to reduce possible risks, besides avoiding any current real passwords altogether, would be to change each digit to a different digit and each punctuation or symbol to a different punctuation or symbol. This will yield a password of approximately the same strength and still allow the letters to be compared against the dictionary, including the many variations and permutations that are checked. If you have repeating or sequential digits, replace them with different repeating or sequential digits. Changing the punctuation, symbols, or digits could possibly cause an obscure (to human eyes but not password cracking tools) keyboard (e.g. "&*(" ) or ASCII collating (e.g. "]^_") sequence to be missed.

The very strict default settings originally used by Password Evaluator/Checker have been relaxed to settings appropriate to long passwords (15 characters and up). If you are checking short passwords, you should select the settings for 6 character passwords for any password less than 12 characters, or those for 12 character passwords for 12 to 14 character passwords. The original defaults were designed to identify any non random multi character components: words, repeats, sequences, well known patterns, that can aid a cracker. These can be very important in passwords up to 8 characters, but as the passwords become longer, such components become less important. As the new Words Only component of the Passwor Generator shows, good passwords can be made from several "predictable" pieces. The only way to get useful evaluations of such passwords, using Password Evaluator, is to set the minimum dictionary word lenght to 6 or 7 and the maximum to 10 or larger. This will stop the password checker from identifing the multiple short words we know to be present, and allow it to possibly find an obscure long word that is hard to see, and which makes the password a poor password. In this case allowed dictionary words should be reduced from 1 to 0.

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