If you immediately understand the title of this posting, you will help me make my point. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you will also help me make my point.

This is a story of a very stupid thing that happened to me on the way to BrainShare SLC in March and that still is happening.

I drove to SLC for BrainShare 2006 in March. I stayed the night in Las Vegas. Where I left my luggage and laptop bag in my big Expedition. My luggage and my laptop bag were stolen out of my big Expedition (Window was broken into) and I lost my wonderful Dell laptop and my beautiful, lovely, it-made-me-cry-to-lose-it, Mac Powerbook.

No worries, I have a back up drive for my Dell...err...oops...it was in the laptop bag. No worries, Mac's have .mac that lets you back up stuff...err...oops...didn't quite get around to setting it up, was too busy.

iFolder...didn't get around to it. Backup software, nope. Lost EVERYTHING. Lost my entire GroupWise Archive for the past three years. Lost my personal journal for the past year. Birth of my daughter amongst other things.

Okay, so there are a lot of stupid things here, but these are not the big ones. The biggest one? No security access to my Dell or Powerbook. No passwords on the Dell, only a few passwords on the Mac. STUPID STUPID STUPID.

So, I changed all the passwords on my IM accounts, on my online email, on my iTunes, on everything, including Online banking because I might have choosen to have cookies make it more convenient to log in to certain accounts. You get the idea.

So what does this have to do with Darmok at Tanagra? Well, BrainShare was in March of this year, 4 months ago, and this week I got a strange phone call from a guy named "Larry".

Larry was a nice guy, acting real innocent, and began talking about buying a computer from me in Las Vegas and how I "Forgot" to give the password to him and if he could just give it to him now that would be cool, cause I forgot to give it to him. And it had a hint, but he couldn't understand it, and was the hint to do with a child of mine, or another relative, cause if he could just get the password he wouldn't need to bug me anymore.

Well, you can figure out for yourself what Larry was looking for. It appears that Larry has my Powerbook that he "supposibly" bought from me out of a van in Las Vegas for $400. And that I gave him my cell phone number, and wasn't my name Richard Bliss, and didn't I remember talking to him?

Larry was a scam and was using a borrowed cell phone from someone he stopped on the street. I called the cell phone number he called me with and it was some kid about 10 who could have been part of the scam for all I know.

But Larry was stuck because on my Mac (Not on my Dell) Apple software had INSISTED that if I wanted to do anything online like with iTunes I had to have a password for my local machine's data. Well, I'm guessing Larry wanted to get some of that data and was trying to get it from me...Okay, now an explanation of Darmok at Tanagra.

When it comes to personal security we are very lazy people. All of us, and you know who I'm talking about. I got caught being stupid and I paid for it. And even my password, which I thought was pretty good, probably wouldn't be hard to figure out from a few clues.

So, if you were attempting to break my password, and the software gave you a "Hint" and the hint that I had written down was "Darmok at Tanagra" how hard would it be to figure out my password?

You would start guessing with a few things:
startrek
Picard
Jeanluc
nextgeneration
enterprise

You get the idea. If you understand that Darmok was an episode of Star Trek:TNG you can find a reference point and begin a process of elimination. Larry was attempting to that. My "hint" had someone's name, so Larry tried to get me to slip up and say how that person was relevant in my life, which would give him more clues.

The fact that Darmok at Tanagra was an episode about communication through metaphor is extremely applicable here. When choosing passwords for yourself, choose something that is contextual for you. It makes it almost impossible to understand or guess words without context.

Picard could not understand Dathon because, even though they are both speaking the same words, they are not able to understand the meaning due to lack of context.

So, if you were going to try to guess my password with a hint of Darmok at Tanagra, you would have tough time. Rodney502 wouldn't have been even on your list.

My brother called me right after this episode aired in 1991 because he really liked it, and the episode was number 502 of the series, with 5 representing the fifth season and 02 representing the number in that season.

So, look at your passwords, see if you can make them more contextual and less "universal". A birthdate is universal and easily discovered on the Internet. A home town, a high school you graduated from, all of these are now able to be discovered easily. Pick something that doesn't make sense expect to you and maybe you won't have to worry about Larry calling you.