AARC Members Urged to Change Their Passwords

March 15, 2010

Over the next couple of months, the AARC will be rolling out an exciting and engaging new online social network for members. While we anticipate that this will be a fun and enriching addition to your membership, we do want members to be prepared for the security and privacy implications of participating in an online social network.

It is vitally important that you change your AARC Internet password over the next few weeks. We want you to be safe and secure while you are online, particularly as you get to “virtually” meet many of your fellow members. Though it may be a hassle to have to remember yet another user ID and password, the benefits of securing your online identity far outweigh the minor inconvenience.

Here are some suggestions for creating a secure password for yourself; try using two or more of these methods in combination.

• Use no less than 6 characters in your password; we strongly suggest using 8 or more characters.
• Use a mixture of upper and lower case characters, numbers, or even punctuation symbols. (You cannot use spaces, however.)
• While it is not a good idea to use personal names or common words, you can use a variation on them by moving up/down/over on the keyboard as you type them. For example, if you move up a row on the keyboard and type “cat”, it becomes “dq5”.
• Spelling words backwards is a quick and easy method!
• “Creative” spellings can help to create a secure password. Try substituting numbers for letters; for example, zero for “o”, one for “i”, 3 for “e”, 4 for “a”, 5 for “s”.
• You can also take longer words and remove the vowels.

Please change your AARC Internet password as soon as possible during the next few weeks. Here are the steps for changing your password:

1. Go to http://services.aarc.org. Log in with your member number and current password (read instructions on that page).
2. After you log in, look to the dark blue bar across the top of the page where you will see a link to "update password." Click on that link.
3. Fill out the boxes to enter a new password. Passwords must be 6 or more characters long, in a combination of alphanumeric characters; passwords are case-sensitive.
4. Click the Submit button to save your changes, then click the Logout link to leave the page.

Please make a note of your password. This is what you will now use to log in to AARC Web pages when you register for courses or webcasts, buy products, or enter our new social networking site.