For years the standard advice was to build a password from mixed cases, digits, and symbols, and to change it every ninety days. Both halves of that advice have now been withdrawn by the bodies that issued it. Forced rotation, it turned out, made people choose weaker passwords and vary them predictably, appending a digit that matched the quarter. Complexity rules produced strings that were hard for humans to remember and no harder for a computer to guess. The current recommendation is a long passphrase, changed only when there is reason to think it has been exposed. The reversal is a useful reminder that security advice is an empirical matter, not a moral one.
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Correct answer to question 47 (Paragraph Comprehension): explain why long-standing password advice was reversed
Method
The passage states the old advice, reports its withdrawal, gives the findings behind that, and states the replacement. It treats the reversal as evidence working properly rather than as a failure to condemn.
Updated: November 2026
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