Hacking Sparks Need for Complex Passwords !

As more Web sites demand passwords, scammers are getting more clever about stealing them. Hence the need for such "passwords-plus" systems.

"A password is a construct of the past that has run out of steam," said Joseph Atick, chief executive of Identix Inc., a Minnesota designer of fingerprint-based authentication. "The human mind-set is not used to dealing with so many different passwords and so many different PINs."

Software such as Symantec Corp.'s Norton Password Manager and Apple Computer Inc.'s Keychain help store passwords in secure, encrypted form. But if you compromise the master password, you're out of luck. Your entire collection is gone.

Many sites, meanwhile, will e-mail passwords insecurely—without encryption—if you forget. A site called BugMeNot.com even encourages users to share passwords for nonfinancial sites such as newspapers.