Hack Your Friends is a game that teaches about password security and how publicly shared social media profiles can be a way to hack your social media accounts. This game also aims to provide information on the differences between a good password and a bad password. The documentation is intended as an explainer for the teachers on how the game was developed, how it works, and what it is based on. They can also use it to explain the information provided here to the students after the play session.
How was this game developed?
Hack Your Friends was created by a group of game developers under the cross-border cultural exchange program called Game n Train Mixer held by Goethe Institut, Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur and Games Bavaria. Game developers from India, South Asia, Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa came together to create games on the theme of “Digital Literacy”.
What is a Password?
A password is a string of characters which consists of letters, numbers and symbols. It is a way by which a computer confirms a user's identity.
Passwords are used everywhere in the digital world from protecting your personal data in social media accounts, bank accounts to your phones.
A password can also be a PIN (Personal Identification Number) which is just a string of numbers that is used to protect your Credit/Debit card account. Passwords are designed to be known only to the user and allow that user to gain access to a device, application or website.
Why should you worry about Passwords?
As much as passwords protect our personal data they are also the main reason we lose our personal data.
The biggest reasons include
People creating passwords that is personal to them like their name, phone number, email id etc
Using commonly used passwords like 123456, “password”, qwerty and more
Share passwords with someone else
Using the same password everywhere all of this makes their account vulnerable to hackers.
Writing down passwords in a piece of paper and forgetting it.
If neglected for too long one can lose their personal account or even money in case of your bank account. So creating a password is no joke and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
And there is much more out there so we recommend you to always do your research before making any decision.
Hack Your Friends: How does this game work?
This game uses Facebook clone to mimic social media websites giving players a sense of reality on how it works. The player plays as a friendly neighborhood hacker who helps their friends recover their lost social media account by going through their public profiles.
Basic premise is players will interact with their friends on the phone and talk with them about their friendbook account and passwords.
Player’s job will be to find out the email id and password of their friend by going through their profile. Once they do find out the right email id and password then they would have to enter them in the “Sign-in” dialogue box
If the password and email entered were right then the conversation will move forward and chapter will end.
If by chance the player is unable to find the password then the game will automatically help the player complete the chapter and the game will move forward.
There are a total of 3 chapters and each chapter will have a different lesson to teach about passwords.
How to create a Strong Password?
Creating a password is not that hard. Basic rules for creating a strong password
Must be greater than 12 characters
Must include Uppercase and Lowercase Letters
Must use symbols and numbers
Not to use your name, phone number, email id, pet name or something that is personal to you
Not to use the same password everywhere
With the above we can make a password something like - “L12ook$$g00@d1” (this document is shared with others so do not use this password ever)
As you can see from the list it is not very hard to create a strong password.
But the question is can someone remember this password for a long time? To tackle this question there is one thing we can use which is called as a “Passphrase”
A Passphrase is basically just like a password but it is much longer and usually has greater than 15 characters.
There are many ways to create a Passphrase some include
Using completely random words (atleast 4 words) which are not common words and using numbers and symbols in between
For example - Holl1o-wratH-chirpingfans#$ (this document is shared with others so do not use this password ever)
Another way to do it, is by creating something that is personal to you but in a long sentence and uses numbers and symbols in between.
For example - you hit a ball and broke the window
Now as a password it could be like - iHitaBall0&broKeWind00w, (this document is shared with others so do not use this password ever) now this is a unique password that one could possibly remember.
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