Finding out about passwords

A password is set up for every account. If no password is provided for the account, the password is blank, which means that no password is required. MySQL doesn’t have any limit for the length of a password, but sometimes other software on your system limits the length to eight characters. If so, any characters after eight are dropped.
For extra security, MySQL encrypts passwords before it stores them. That means passwords are not stored in the recognizable characters that you entered. This security measure ensures that no one can look at the stored passwords and see what they are.
Unfortunately, some bad people out there might try to access your data by guessing your password. They use software that tries to connect rapidly in succession using different passwords — a practice called cracking. The following are some recommendations for choosing a password that is as difficult to crack as possible:

• Use six to eight characters.
• Include one or more of each of the following — uppercase letter, lowercase letter, number, and punctuation mark.
• Do not use your account name or any variation of your account name.
• Do not include any word in a dictionary, including foreign language dictionaries.
• Do not include a name.
• Do not use a phone number or a date.

A good password is hard to guess and easy to remember. If it’s too hard to remember, you might need to write it down, which defeats the purpose of having a password. One way to create a good password is to use the first characters of a favorite phrase. For instance, you could use the phrase “All for one! One for all!” to make this password:
Afo!Ofa!
This password doesn’t include any numbers, but you can fix that by using the
numeral 4 instead of the letter f. Then your password is
A4o!O4a!
Or you could use the number 1 instead of the letter o to represent one.
Then the password is
A41!14a!
This password is definitely hard to guess. Other ways to incorporate numbers into your passwords include substituting 1 (one) for the letter l or substituting 0 (zero) for the letter o.