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Description

Find out how to create super-strong passwords for all your online activities then make your own.

Activity text courtesy The Scout Association https://www.scouts.org.uk/activities/strong-password-weak-password/

Resources

Sticky notes
Pens or pencils

Instructions

Before you begin
Make sure there are enough small pieces of sticky notes (or scrap paper) for everyone to have at least five each.

Strong or weak?
1. The person leading the activity should ask the group when they might need to create a password for an online activity. This might be when creating an email account, a gaming or social media account, or a subscription.

Remind everyone that most social accounts have an age restriction in place – like film or game age restrictions, this is for their safety. Before opening a social media account, they should always talk it through with a trusted adult.\

2. Passwords should be really strong so no one can guess them. The person leading the activity should also everyone what might happen if someone guessed your password. They might pretend to be you and post something unpleasant, or they might try to find out personal information about you or your friends or family.

3. The person leading the activity should explain that to create a strong password that’s easy to remember, people could try using three random words containing upper and lower case letters (capitals and small letters), numbers, and symbols (such as exclamation marks, question marks, pound signs, asterisks, or dollar signs).

4. Everyone should get five sticky notes.

5. Everyone should write a number on one sticky note, a symbol on one sticky note, and three random words on their other three sticky notes. These words could be something they can see, feel, or touch – or just a word they like the sound of.

For example, 327, red, house, monkeys and !. Avoid details like names of people or pets, favourite holiday locations, your date of birth or anything related to the sports team you support.

6. Everyone should put their four pieces of paper in a row on the floor or table to create a password.

7. Now it’s time to mix it up! Everyone should switch around the pieces of password puzzle until they have one they’re happy with.
For example, 327redhousemonkeys!

8. Everyone should try to make their password stronger by adding capitals, replacing a letter with a symbol for added strength, or splitting up words or numbers.
For example, 3monkeys!redhouse27 or 3mOnkeys!h0use27rEd

9. Everyone should spend a few moments memorising their password and saying it quietly to themselves. The person leading the activity should remind everyone not to use these passwords in real life if there’s any chance that anyone else has seen them – people could repeat this activity at home to create a secure password that no one else knows.
Sometimes it helps to make a picture in your head: for this example you could picture three monkeys sitting inside a red house with the door number ‘27’.

Tags

• Digital Citizen
• online security
• passwords
• strong password

Badge Links

• Digital Citizen - Password