Never share your login

On this page you will find advice on how to keep your personal and confidential information safe.


Keep your identify safe

Your login details, i.e. your usernames and passwords, are the lock we put on systems and web services to keep out digital intruders. But that lock will only work if you take good care of it.

Login details are personal and must never be shared with anyone. Don't write them down, and make sure you create passwords that are hard to guess.

If you suspect that others know your login details, or that they may otherwise have been compromised, change your password immediately.

Be particularly careful with AU passwords

Passwords used on AU systems should never be used on other systems. Read more about AU passwords.

Good advice on creating passwords and protecting your identity

Keep your login details to yourself

Authorities, banks or genuine companies will never ask for usernames, passwords or MitID information by email, text or similar. If you're asked to provide this kind of information, alarm bells should go off.

Learn more about how to spot phishing.

Make strong passwords and remember them

  • A password must be strong. Make sure that it is not easy to guess your password.
  • A password should not contain personal information. Many people use birth dates, names, addresses and similar as passwords, but they are relatively easy to guess for people with sinister intentions.
  • You can create and remember a password based on a sentence or a passphrase, for example.

Password based on sentences

  • It is easier to remember a sentence than a random order of letters, numbers, special characters, etc. You can use this to create a password as a number of characters based on a sentence. For example, Lauritz has been rector of Aarhus University for more than four years. This sentence can be translated into the following password: LhbRoAU>4yrs.
  • Without the sentence, this password would probably be almost impossible to remember, but the sentence makes it very easy to remember.
  • You can expand the system, for example by replacing specific letters with numbers or special characters. E.g. $ instead of S.

Password = passphrase

  • You can also use passphrases as your password. These are whole sentences used as passwords.
    For example, Peter has 1 yellow Volvo, but it looks brown. 
  • This passphrase is a good example because it is relatively easy to remember, fairly complex, difficult to guess and so long that trying to guess it would be impossible.
  • The downside is that not all systems support passphrases. 
  • You can often work around this by removing "spaces" and other not "normal" characters, so the sentence instead looks like this Peterhas1yellowVolvo,butitlooksbrown.
  • If it is possible to use passphrases, be careful not to use passphrases that are "easy" to guess, for example "Old MacDonald had 1 farm". Famous quotes and songs, etc. are probably already on the hackers’ passphrase lists, making them easier to guess.

Change passwords that are not secret

If you have even the slightest suspicion that unauthorised people may know your password, make sure you change it immediately.

AU continually checks that there are no public leaks of your primary user login at AU.

If you wish to check whether your private passwords have been leaked, you can visit the website haveibeenpwned.com.


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