We've added several security enhancements in the last several days, to
counter not only the techniques that were recently used against us, but
others as well. We're not telling exactly what, because that would
help the wrong people! Be assured that it's good stuff, informed by
multiple sources of security expertise gained over multiple decades.

These bring our login security up to a much higher level, but with
one serious warning to keep in mind:

There is NO WAY to protect you if you have a password that's easy
to guess.

We can slow hackers down. We can stop most, maybe even the vast
majority of attempts to break into your character(s) on Achaea.
We can't give you the highest level of safety without YOU doing
something.

What can you do? Have a really good, secure password, and never tell
it to, or share it with, anybody.

Password security is your concern. You have to pick a password
that is as secure as possible. Follow the advice in HELP HACKING,
repeated (in spirit) below:

Passwords, good and bad:
------------------------
BAD: your name, your pet's name, your street number, part of your
telephone number, your birthday, names of friends, family,
favourite books or characters in books, song titles or words
from popular music, pretty much any word from a dictionary,
or anything that's very short.

GOOD: 6-8 letters long, or more!
+ capitals and little letters mixed up
+ Special characters (like *, &, ^, %, ", and so forth)
+ Numbers
+ Make it easy to remember by splicing a couple of
completely unrelated words together with unusual
punctuation, and even substitute a number for a
letter.
+ Examples: water%parachut3, 4eyesRg--d,
1sthis?aNICE:place (that's a numeric 1 at the start)

Conclusion
----------
We're slowing 'em down. We're stopping a LOT of them. Now the ball
is in your court. It's your turn to protect yourself, knowing that
you have nobody to blame but yourself if your password is something
like 'fluffy' or your name backwards, or even the password (really a
combination) used by both the King of Druidia and President Scroob
in Spaceballs, the Movie.

So please, for your own safety, make a really secure, safe password,
thus fulfilling your true ACHAEAN DUTY, and we'll mock those hacker
scum together!


* oh yes - almost forgot - this replaces the account freeze we had
put in place on an emergency basis earlier.

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Chronos, in the year 450 AF.