Template:Committed identity: Difference between revisions
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# If you want to change your string, do so, but keep track of all your old secret strings. It is best to reveal all of them if you ever want to confirm your identity, as this will establish that you are the same person who used your account from the first moment the committed identity was published. |
# If you want to change your string, do so, but keep track of all your old secret strings. It is best to reveal all of them if you ever want to confirm your identity, as this will establish that you are the same person who used your account from the first moment the committed identity was published. |
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# Your string should not be short: at least 15 characters. A dedicated attacker could, by brute force, try strings until they find your secret string, but if your string is long enough, that attack would take too long to be practical. If your string is at least 15 characters long, there are around 10<sup>27</sup> strings of that length, or a thousand trillion trillion (and that's just counting alphanumeric strings with spaces). |
# Your string should not be short: at least 15 characters. A dedicated attacker could, by brute force, try strings until they find your secret string, but if your string is long enough, that attack would take too long to be practical. If your string is at least 15 characters long, there are around 10<sup>27</sup> strings of that length, or a thousand trillion trillion (and that's just counting alphanumeric strings with spaces). |
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==Why?== |
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The intended use of this template is to help in the (hopefully unlikely) event that your account is compromised. If you published your real-life identity, then that identity could be used to reestablish contact with you if your account were compromised (keep in mind, contact cannot be established with you through your account, since it may be under the control of someone else). However, many Wikipedia users do not disclose their real-life identities, or disclose little enough of them that it may be difficult to establish their identity. |
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This is not a replacement for having a [[Password strength|strong password]]. You should still do everything you can to prevent your account being compromised, including using a strong password and remembering to log yourself out when using a computer others may have access to. But even if you do everything right, it is still possible that your account could become corrupted, for instance, via a [[trojan horse (computing)|trojan horse]] or a brute-force attack on your password. |
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This template categorizes pages it is used on into [[:Category:Wikipedians with committed identities]]. |
This template categorizes pages it is used on into [[:Category:Wikipedians with committed identities]]. |
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[[Category:Wikipedia related user templates|{{PAGENAME}}]] |
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[[Category:Computer related user templates|{{PAGENAME}}]] |
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