Updated on 26th January 2024

Last week my six-year-old son was introduced to cybersecurity principles and practices. Okay, it was not really his first interaction.

What happened was that I came into the sitting room and found him crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I have forgotten the password of my tablet,” he said.

He had put a new passcode the night before because he thought his elder brother knew the one he had, and he had now forgotten the new one. I urged him to try and remember it but the variations he thought could be the ones did not work.

I told him that if he was unable to remember it, we would have to reset his tablet and he would lose the games he had on it and the progress he had made in them. I told him that we would be able to restore Clash of Clans (one of his favourites). (Clash of Clans allows players to associate each installation with an email address and you can restore a game with its progress by having a code sent to that email address).

He surprised me by saying that another of the games had CloudSave. Evidently, he understood that CloudSave applies in a situation such as this.

So I ended up following a YouTube video that guided me on the initial stages of the reset process and we set up the tablet again. I told him to put a passcode that he would remember. I also know it now. He seemed satisfied with having Clash of Clans restored and I saw him install a few other games.

Lessons

• Don’t forget your password. Use a password manager if you can.
• Use the backup features provided by your device or software. You must never know when you might need it.
• Keep your passwords private. I think this generation of digital natives will be less likely to casually share passwords as I have sometimes seen done by older people.