Tomorrow is the deadline to change access account passwords, a new requirement put forth by the university to comply with a U.S. government initiative that requires passwords to be reset periodically.

Students will have to change their passwords before they can access online Penn State services such as Webmail, ANGEL and Penn State's Portal.

Currently, 62 percent of the 129,000 people with Penn State accounts have secured their use of Penn State features beyond tomorrow, Robin Anderson, director of customer communications for Information Technology Services (ITS), said.

After this reset, students will be required to reset their passwords each year.

Anderson estimates that 46,000 people, including faculty and staff, will need to change their passwords between now and April 2 or their accounts will be shut down, forcing them to reregister an account at signature stations, which can be found in some of the campus computer labs.

However, accounts will not be shut down for long-term password keepers until the April 2 deadline.

"For students, it means that when they try to check their Webmail [tomorrow], if they haven't changed their password, they will go to the Web access screen with the thumbprint to type in their information and they will get a message that says they can't get any further without changing their password," Anderson said.

She added eLion will not be affected.

ITS is currently offering a drawing for a $99 Computer Store gift card or "clip and go" iPod shuffle for all students, faculty and staff who change their passwords before Feb. 2.

"I really wanted the money," Steven Owens (freshman-chemistry) said. "Otherwise I probably would have just waited until later in February."

Anderson said she hopes people get the message.

"The thing is, every campus has received posters and handouts and listservs all over the place," she said. "The message has not gone out just one time. I don't think you can go into any building at Penn State and not see one of these posters."

Posters sporting a groundhog subtly remind account holders to change their secret code before Punxsutawney Phil pops out of his hole on Feb. 2.

Directions to change passwords can be found at its.psu.edu. For those who wait beyond the deadline, a password change hotline, which will be announced on the Web site, will be available this Saturday and Sunday.

Students will be required to change their passwords every 365 days from the last time they changed it.

Some students said they changed their password to something else and then back to their original because they couldn't remember a new one. Anderson said this should be avoided.

"There's a history of three passes kept by the system," she said. "The one you had before is in your history file. The one you have now is in your history file. You won't be able to change it back next time."

Anderson said the Penn State campaign is part of the government's e-authentication initiative, which says schools that want to have research conducted and paid for the federal government need to require passwords changed at a certain frequency.

"People's computers here have been hacked," Anderson said. "They have not been hacked to the extent that UCLA, who had thousands of student data records exposed. But there's always a risk."

Despite the threats, Anderson said she expects some students to wait beyond tomorrow to change their passwords.

"I didn't [change my password]," Thomas Fiki (junior-kinesiology) said. "I just forgot. I'm just being lazy."