How important is the passphrase?
Critically important. It is almost certainly the weakest link in theencryption chain with most home/amateur users. I provide links at theend of the FAQ, some of these should either help directly or givefurther links about how to create an effective passphrase.For the newbies: never choose a single word, no matter how unusual youthink it is. A passphrase must be that, a phrase, a series of words,characters and punctuation intermixed. One method that I believe wouldhelp is to deliberately mis-spell common words in a phrase. Scruggle inplace of struggle, matrificent in place of magnificent. These could bethe start of a longer phrase. Taking this a step further, invent wordsthat are pronounceable but totally meaningless.Note it is important to include some figures and keyboard characterssuch as punctuation. The use of these will ensure that a simplesearch using just lower case letters will fail.
Critically important. It is almost certainly the weakest link in the encryption chain with most home/amateur users. I provide links at the end of the FAQ, some of these should either help directly or give further links about how to create an effective passphrase. For the newbies: never choose a single word, no matter how unusual you think it is. A passphrase must be that, a phrase, a series of words, characters and punctuation intermixed. One method that I believe would help is to deliberately mis-spell common words in a phrase. Scruggle in place of struggle, matrificent in place of magnificent. These could be the start of a longer phrase. Taking this a step further, invent words that are pronounceable but totally meaningless. Note it is important to include some figures and keyboard characters such as punctuation. The use of these will ensure that a simple search using just lower case letters will fail.
