Password Protecting Your Precious Objects

Courtesy of Casay

As world owners we want our worlds to be unique. As object modelers we want to protect our hard work. How do we do that? Password protecting our objects of course. It is just as simple as it sounds but there are a few extra precautions to take. Common sense is first. Don't ever give your worlds password to anyone or only to people you know and trust. The person you've known for a couple of months in AW isn't necessarily someone to trust. Don't give your objects to world owners that don't password their objects or that have several people that know the password. As an added precaution, change your rwx script slightly for each world you have an object in. This makes it harder for people that might try to crack your password to your world objects that you don't share.

Don't password protect freely available objects. I guess it's easier for someone to crack your password if they already know the contents of the zipped file. Use a combination of upper and lower case letters, punctuation marks and numbers in your password. Don't use a word or name. Be sure to write it down and keep it someplace safe. Make the password as least 12 characters as this makes it extremely hard for someone to crack it. It might only take a few hours to crack a short password but a few days for a long one.

Don't know how to password/ zip your objects? No worries. There's a couple of step by step tutorials that citizens have generously written for you using Winzip. Including: Epip's Winzip Tutorial, and Archon Manus has also written a nice article on AW object security with tips on passwording that I highly recommend reading.

So, now you want to go in and change the password on all your objects to better protect them. That would take hours to do object by object. Luckily for us, Andras has created multi-zip. This program lets you, in mass, unzip and then re-zip with a new password several objects at a time. It will also upload your newly passworded files for you.

Using this common sense approach to security will help you keep your objects safe and your world unique.

Casay

Casay, in addition to being one of AW Community's greatest object and avatar designers, maintains the Objects d'Active Worlds object bank. The Od'AW offers free objects to world builders! Visit and donate often!

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