Why are strong passwords important?
You may think that you don't have anything on your account which makes it necessary to have a strong password. That probably isn't completely true, because passwords to accounts can be valuable to people with bad intentions in a variety of ways.
Hacking attempts do occur. People try to get into the system using a variety of techniques. Strong passwords are an important line of defense against this type of attack.
Even accounts without much access can be used to learn about a system and then try to access other areas. A particularly malicious attack could disrupt university resources for days or even weeks.
University data includes information that is much desired by identity theives. In fact, universities and colleges are only slightly behind businesses in the number of incidents of stolen and lost data. We do not want to become a national headline on identity theft.
Having access to your account would let someone send email in your name, access your course materials in D2L, and if you are a faculty/staff they have access to university data on students. Even just reading your email might give them enough information about you to start the process of stealing your identity.
It might be true that very few people would care about your data or information. However, crackers will delete data just to cause trouble. It's fun for them.
Changing passwords periodically ensures that they do not get guessed over time and ensures that inactive accounts become inaccessible more rapidly. Organizations in the private and academic sectors require a new password anywhere from every 30 days to once a year. UWL took a middle approach to various recommendations that existed by going with every 120 days. It is NOT our intent to enforce rules that make systems less functional for our users. However, we also have to balance that with security needs.
Passwords are not the only line of security. Virus protection, checking for spyware, not responding to phishing emails, and other things are also important. But strong passwords that are regularly changed do take an important step towards securing your resources and those of the university as a whole.