WinZip to the rescue

[Alison Young]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> Secondly, I was assuming that a phone call (providing each party recognises
> the other's voice) is more secure than a fax, if you care about other
> individuals inside the receiving building (possibly unauthorised)
> intercepting and copying the password, as typical fax machines aren't
> securely located. Although "secure password" probably contains things that
> are hard to spell out, which might make that a bad plan.

I actually had to do that recently, although in this case it was providing 
credentials to external contacts who I'd never met before so the voice 
recognition wasn't that useful.

It was actually a little exciting, in an unbelievable nerdy way, to answer 
the phone, confirm who they were and then reel off a long string of random 
characters. Next time around I'll also be transferring the usernames in a 
brown envelope under the table of a Parisian cafe to a man wearing a blue 
fedora.

The most important thing I learned from the entire exercise is to look up 
the phonetic alphabet beforehand. Unless you do this, you'll suddenly 
realise that the only word you can think of that begins with P is 
parakeet. That's if you can think of a word at all.

Ali

-- 
Alison Young
ali at anarres-worlds.org