Today's passwords suck!

A few nights ago, a group of hackers hijacked over 2 million usernames and passwords for various social media sites; including Facebook. These were then published online for the world to see and use. I have to say with all this talk on cyber security...there's just one thing that people fail to do; make strong passwords.

The entire list primarily consisted of poorly created passwords; "123456", "password" and even one that was "000000" filled the released list and it made me laugh out loud; how can people be so stupid when it comes to protecting themselves for this kind of attack? Any modern password cracking software can easily break into an account with the password "123456" in less than 10 seconds....10 SECONDS. No wonder why these hackers could get 2 million of these horrid creations. 

Then again...anyone making a password will most likely use something they'll remember easily and that my friends...is where the problem lies.

The key to internet security doesn't necessarily lie in a specific browser or its extensions (It helps, obviously). It does however lie in good password management. First...any good password is at least 12 to 19 characters long and is a mix of symbols, numbers and upper and lower case letters. Secondly, this password should never be the same one after a month and should be changed frequently to maintain security. Third....NEVER SHARE YOUR PASSWORD....EVER. The only real exception to this is if the person is a qualified IT specialist that has to use your password to access account settings and work their magic to solve your problems; however...that being said...don't just give your code to the first guy that says he's in IT; know who you're talking to. Finally....NEVER EVER USE YOUR BANK NUMBERS AND PIN NUMBERS AS A COMPUTER PASSWORD! This is basically shooting yourself in the face if someone gets a hold of that code and means that the same person could go in and make a muck out of your financial bills. Use a password that has absolutely nothing to do with your bank (or your personal life for that matter); you'll stay safer that way.

All in all, this isn't a challenging thing to understand, yet people are so lazy that they'll settle for just about anything. Well, those same people are on that list of exposed passwords and are probably thinking to themselves "Aw gee.....I wonder why that happened". Well....when you have a password that's "12345"...you're basically asking for it.

SpaceBalls sums up my case very nicely

What Rockstar needs to do in order to make GTA Online a great MMO .

GTA online is a mess; a really big mess. Instead of getting a very balanced multiplayer game that kicks ass and take names, we got a game riddled with inexcusable bugs that remains to be fixed, a broken economy that everytime Rockstar decides to touch, just gets even worse and best yet; a redundant punishment system that while is now partially fixed, still makes enjoying the game extremely difficult to enjoy.

I already made a post awhile back on why I left GTA Online, so this is a post on what Rockstar can do to turn themselves around.

1. Get rid of Bad Sport: Period.
The game has a system in which destroying the personal property of other players can land you on a server filled with other, more cynical players that you don't want to be around (racial slurs and stupidity included). Although Rockstar has reduced the punishment for destroying other players cars, it still exists. Quite honestly, for a game which criminality is a norm; this kind of punishment is unwanted. Get rid of it!

2. Fix your servers!
When you have the world in front of you vanishing and slowing you down; that isn't you, its the server and some other person with a bad internet connection. Ok first off, Rockstar needs to use its money to build a server that compensates more efficiently for those low connection players. Secondly, Rockstar needs to increase its capacity for players since you can't host a social party in game that crashes a day after it launched because of the sheer amount of players that joined. So yea....there's no excuse for this.

3. Patch the glitches! Don't punish the players!
Rockstar has a track record for failing to properly patch games of glitches (See Red Dead Redemption). Their idea of dealing with glitches is to merely punish the glitchers; which the user responds kindly by continuing to exploit the game. With GTA Online, Rockstar attempted to patch up their glitches......4 times....all of which failed to solve the problem...AND THEY STILL insist on punishing the glitchers when they know it doesn't work. Seriously, get a grip and patch these glitches once and for all! Punishing the player doesn't work.

4. Don't kill the only legitament way to make money
When Rockstar drops the earnings for missions and races to make players buy their snotty cash cards; that creates a problem. In game micro transactions are bad enough, making players resort to that or glitching is even worse. That's just greed on their part and will win you no respect from your loyal fan base....or, are you simply telling everyone to go f*** themselves and letting us rot? Speaking of censoring...

5. Censor your game site? Really?

This makes no sense. GTA 5 is probably the single most provocative game you can buy right now in terms of sheer content: There's swearing to the extreme, graphic violence, even nudity; FULL BLOWN NUDITY. So, I would like to raise the question as why Rockstar decided to censor it's "Social Club" (A social service for it's gaming community)? Are we promoting this graphic content to 12 year olds now? Is that how we roll now? GTA is not for children, please stop marketing this game for them.

6. Don't release an Add-On pack that has bad content

The only thing interesting that came with the newly released "Beach Bum" pack for GTA5 was the addition of a faster off-road vehicle; that's it. I'm sorry, but I have no need for redundant weapons or clothing that I'm not going to waste my time with or races that are just carbon copies of each other and only focus on their vehicle additions.

7. Get rid of the micro transaction system

I, and hundreds of thousands of other people like me will never pay $20 for fake money. I will not spend money on some "money card" for GTA Online when I can easily glitch that money. People prefer getting it for free than paying for it and quite honestly, with the cuts to mission payouts and the inability to fix their glitches, Rockstar is asking for it. If and when Rockstar finally kills the glitches and forces it's users to rely on "money cards", then I can see this game becoming one of the worst MMO flops to ever grace our consoles.

And finally.....

8. Cap the rank

At this current point, the level system in GTA Online is far from broken; it's a joke. A player can get to level 1000 (or in technical terms, 999) and earn nothing, unlock nothing; as everything there needs to be unlocked is already earned by level 150. Why Rockstar just left the level system like this is beyond me, but it adds an unnecessary system that offers no incentive other than pathetic bragging rights over a rank that gives nothing back. If you've unlocked everything at 150, cap it there! It's not that hard to do that, Rockstar.

That's it. That's all there needs to be fixed currently; and I say that because I expect more to be broken as Rockstar makes a mockery of itself each time they attempt to make things better. I seriously hope that someone, somewhere in that company can bring some order to this broken cesspool of junk.