Yellowstone Garbage Cans and Internet Security
/Yellowstone National Park has quite a challenging garbage problem. A garbage can at Yellowstone needs to be complex enough that bears and raccoons can't get into it, yet simple enough that pictographic instructions can clearly explain its use to any given visitor, no matter what language he or she speaks. Very simple and yet very complex.
After reading about how a writer at Wired had his Amazon, Gmail and iCloud accounts hacked recently, I thought of the Yellowstone garbage cans. It seems to me that Internet security is very similar: you want a system that is easy for Grandpa Uncle Joe to figure out, but complex enough to keep out the bears (or trolls). Current best practices for passwords are becoming more and more complex, but I fear that poor old Grandpa Uncle Joe is easy to stump, and those bears are pretty damn clever. So what we have is a garbage can locked with fourteen combination locks, a confused old man with a worn out house key, and bears who can fool the park rangers into leaving the gate open. There has to be a better way.