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November 10, 2026 10:38 am  #1


Does Your Stn. Make You Change Your Password Monthly? If So, Read This

I hear it all the time, especially on Corus stations - management has a policy of making employees change their computer access password every month. Sometimes a host will come on grumbling about it, saying they couldn't get access to their prepared show prep, because they couldn't remember their new password. 

And the older you get, the worse, it seems, it becomes. That may be why I got such a kick out of this:

 

November 10, 2026 12:31 pm  #2


Re: Does Your Stn. Make You Change Your Password Monthly? If So, Read This

At my previous station in the 2000s and 2010s, one of the news reporters had printed and posted, in the newsroom, this humorous line that's made the rounds online for several years:

"Sorry, but your password must contain an uppercase letter, a number, a haiku, a gang sign, a hieroglyph, and the blood of a virgin."

When the company rolled out Microsoft 365, the system required everyone to change their password every three months, and in the beginning, there were pretty stringent password complexity requirements, as well as not allowing the re-use of any previous password by any user in the organization. Putting in a new password that the system would accept was sometimes a challenge, and if I remember correctly, IT later backed off on the strict requirements, especially the need for quarterly password changes.

My wife is an elementary schoolteacher, and the public school board around here no longer requires users to change their password at regular intervals. Staff can have the same password indefinitely for most online services that the school board manages, but there is mandatory two-factor authentication via Microsoft Authenticator, so every time my wife logs into her computer or any of the board's online services/portals/etc., she has to key in, on her phone, a two-digit number that appears in an Authenticator pop-up on her computer screen.

 

November 10, 2026 12:58 pm  #3


Re: Does Your Stn. Make You Change Your Password Monthly? If So, Read This

geez .. just incorporate some date permutation into the password .. used this approach for decades at work .. 

 

November 10, 2026 1:47 pm  #4


Re: Does Your Stn. Make You Change Your Password Monthly? If So, Read This

Password manager... then you can change all your passwords or have ones which aren't guessable...