Telepathwords from Microsoft reads your mind
Microsoft Research has responded to a rise in hacking attempts with a new project called Telepathwords to help you to choose easy to remember, but difficult to guess passwords to help protect against hackers.
Telepathwords detects the quality of your passwords by guessing your password setting habits by “reading your mind” and guessing your password setting habits by using common passwords you’ve used in the past.
Microsoft says, “To guess the next character you’ll type, we send the characters you have already typed to query our prediction engine. The prediction engine uses a database of common passwords and phrases that are too large for us send to your computer.”
How Telepathwords works
Telepathwords was tested by hundreds of Microsoft employees prior to its release to the public and when you try it, we have to admit, it’s a little freaky – as you type, it guesses the next character you’re about to type while setting your password, thus indicating that your password is weak and should be changed.
Telepathwords predicts the next character of your passwords by using knowledge of:
- Common passwords, such as those made public as a result of security breaches
- Common phrases, such as those that appear frequently on web pages or in common search queries
- Common password-selection behaviors, such as the use of sequences of adjacent keys
Passwords are frequently compromised, so this tool can go a long way toward helping strengthen your passwords and protect you better from hackers.
