How to change your password

In general, on the Maths systems, you have a single username and password.

Information is also available on general password and computer systems security.

To change your password:

• First, you must be logged in to the departmental website. If you are not logged in, click on the "login" link at the top right of this page; the login box will appear into which you need to enter your username and password, and then press Enter (or the login button)
• Once you are logged in, Click on the Edit Profile link near the top left, below your name
• Click the "Change password" button at the top of the profile page. 

The password changer also has a short link of https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/change_password

The password changer rejects passwords that it considers to be weak based on a modern strength algorithm. In general this means longer sequences of words, known as a passphrase, are often better than a shorter cryptic password as either method can add strength but the former is typically easier for humans to remember.

To have a high chance of being accepted your password should:

• be longer than 12 characters, and likely longer than 16 characters
• either be a sufficient long sequence of words (a passphrase) OR not be entirely based on a dictionary words
• should contain characters from three of the following four categories:
  • Uppercase alphabet characters (A-Z)
  • Lowercase alphabet characters (a-z)
  • Arabic numerals (0-9)
  • Nonalphanumeric characters (for example, !$#,%)
• not contain too many repeated characters

Remember: Never write your password down or tell it to anybody else.

Forgotten Password?

If your password does not work there could be several reasons:

• Your account has expired - At 28, 7 and 1 days to go before an account is set to expire the account receives warning emails. As such your account should not expire without you being aware (unless you failed to setup mail forwarding on the account and also did not check the account email regularly).
• Incorrect username - Your Maths username is normally your surname or a variant of it (bloggs, bloogsj, bloggsj1, etc.). It is not the same as your SSO (usually in the format abcd1234 or abcd1234@OX.AC.UK), and it is not your full email address. If you cannot remember your username, please email @email so we can confirm it.
• Incorrect password - If you have forgotten your password, you will need to visit a computing officer with proof of ID (your university card) to get it reset (it is impossible for us to decrypt your existing password). We cannot give out a new password over the phone, since we cannot be sure who we are talking to. We cannot send out passwords via email, as email is not secure, and again we cannot be sure who is actually reading/receiving the email. If you cannot visit an IT officer in person, please email @email - in exceptional cases, it may be possible to arrange a secure video call to verify your identity, or have a new password passed on to your course administrator or organiser (or someone else) who knows you and can pass it on securely.
• Your account has been phished, abused, and thus locked. You will need a password reset, similar to the above case.