Your privacy is our utmost concern. For better account security, we require our customers to use passphrases instead of passwords.
Passphrases are longer, yet easier to remember than a password of random, mixed characters. A passphrase is a memorized phrase consisting of a sequence of mixed words with or without spaces. For example, you might create a passphrase by using association techniques, such as scanning a room in your home and creating a passphrase that uses words to describe what you see (e.g. “closet lamp bathroom mug”). Alternatively, you might create a passphrase using rhyming techniques, such as "how now brown cow."
Regardless of the phrase you choose, your passphrase needs to meet the minimum requirement by Vast Bank. Read more below.
Vast Passphrase Minimum Requirements:
- Your passphrase should be at least 15 characters in length
Vast Passphrase Minimum Recommendations:
- Your passphrase should include at least 1 lowercase and at least 1 uppercase character
Why do we prefer Passphrases over Passwords?
- Passphrases are much easier to remember than passwords, which often contain a random set of symbols and letters combined together. It's much easier to remember a phrase that’s commonly used in your household or a line from your favorite song.
- Passphrases typically satisfy complex security rules easily because they often contain punctuation and are case-sensitive.
- Passphrases are next to impossible to crack because even the most effective password cracking tools start to break down around 10 characters.
Still not convinced? Let us humor you:
Sometime way back when, the science comic blogger Randall Munroe posted a comic comparing the nature of passwords and passphrases. His illustration attempts to demonstrate mathematically, using information theory, that passwords tend to be weaker than passphrases (while also being more difficult to remember). As a result, people often use easy-to-remember passwords, write them down, or reuse them, thus weakening password security further.
