February 2026
Beginner to intermediate
160 pages
3h 43m
English
Content preview from Take Control of Your Passwords, 4th Edition
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Understand the Problems with Passwords
Because you’re reading this book, you probably already have a problem with your passwords, such as how to come up with them or how to remember them. We’ll get to those sorts of problems shortly.
First, I want to discuss some of the overall problems with passwords. What’s wrong with simple, easy-to-remember passwords? Why do we need so many passwords, anyway? What are the common threats against passwords? And if this whole username/password system is so flawed, what can be done about it?
Simple for You, Simple for Them
The whole idea of a password is that it’s private—something known only to you and to the entity with which you have an account (a bank, website, cloud service, etc.). If someone else learns ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.