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Remembering multiple passwords

Gerard124 said:
With so many passwords for email accounts, web sites, banking etc how do folk keep record of them without compromising security? There are simply too many for me to remember. Suggestions?
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Buy a notebook, and write them all in there. Keep it in your bedside drawers. If it gets stolen you have bigger issues to worry about*.

*especially if you see your best friend** wearing your socks.

**though, if your best friend is a girl***, it could be the start of something good if you play your cards right.

***if you're a girl yourself, what the hell are you doing here?
 
This is a complex problem, made more difficult by the stupid rules and limitations that web sites enforce.

I use pass-phrases rather than passwords.

So, for example, "I like 3 sausages." meets the usual password complexity rules, i.e. upper and lower case, number, special characters, and is much more difficult to crack than traditional advice for complexity, but really easy to remember.

Other simple examples are:

I am 23 years old.

I have 2 dogs named Bill and Bob.

My address is 22 Acacia Avenue.


These are super-easy to remember and, with a little inventiveness, can be made even harder to crack, although can add to the problem of remembering the variation you use. Tip - be consistent (they are hard enough to crack anyway).

E.g.

I am 23 years OLD.

I have 2 dogs named Bill 4ND Bob.

My address is 21 Acacia Avenue. <-- this is a lie so even if someone knew what you were doing they know you live at no.22 so would get it wrong.


Lots of very easy alternatives, but make your own up but don't tell anyone your system. Lie a lot :)

The only time I've come unstuck with this is when sites like Microsoft limit the number of characters to 18 but still insist on complexity. Dumbasses!

HTH

PS. If you want to know more try googling "password entropy".


PPS. I'm not 23, I don't have any dogs, and I don't live a... oh damn it!
 
Use Password Safe http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

I don't reuse passwords between websites, the biggest problem with reasonable passwords is badly designed web servers getting hacked and then the scraped passwords then get tested on other more valuable sites to see if they are reused
 
I use remote family names with underscores and digits that are only known by myself (reason for them). Never been hacked once although someone did once manage to book flights ten years ago on my debit card but I suspect my card was cloned at a petrol station. I tend to use the same name and vary the numbers a little. mixtures of old phone numbers etc. my memory is terrible thanks to some medication I was given for depression but to date never had a problem remembering passwords with the above appraoch. obviously it goes without saying, you should never make note of any passwords. that said i'm guilty of this in my apple note app although to anyone else's eye, they wouldn't realise what they are looking at anyway as its in a code.

So to summarise, use a long name, separated by an underscore and a series of numbers unique to you. if you want to further increase security, use the odd Caps letter. Or a good idea above, stick some Emoji's in there. although it's only a matter of time before hackers get onto this, assuming they haven't already. I believe, if you're going to get hacked then you will. With the use of trojans and key-loggers etc, it's quite easy to. Hence online banking is done by dropdown boxes, for my bank anyway. although if your computer has been hacked and watched, screenshots can easily be taken at anytime. You're never safe...
 
Like others here I have 2 sets of passwords, one set easy, one hard.

The easy ones are used foir things like forums and facebook, so it might be "bananas". If that gets hacked, not really a problem. I will make it harder for important password by extending it to "B4n4n4s" or harder still by using "B4n4n4s are not the only fruit". I never write them down but I'll note where they come from so this one will be noted as "bastardised novel title". Other things you can safely write down are "Girlfriend's old address" or "Grandma's dogs" on the basis that anyone reading this who can track down Helen Johnson who was of 14 Tennyson Crescent some 20 years ago or name Poppy, Molly and Thrupence is clearly a better spy than Matthew Bourne so nothing will escape them.
 
matthewr said:
if you changed the skimmed milk for single malt petrol that would actually be a good password.
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Except that it doesn't include a capital letter or a non-alphanumeric character which some require ... and it's not between 8 and 12 characters ... or 6 and 8 depending on the whim of the webmaster ... oh and you'll have to change it in 90 days anyway (and you can't reuse old passwords) and you have to remember passwords for production, sandbox and multiple development environments ...

Did I say I hated passwords?

Why can't I just spit on the keyboard and have it recognise my DNA?
 
LastPass for me. It's about the only software I think worth paying for ($12pa for premium). Very secure passwords, random as long and complex as you like, works seamlessly across phone/tablet/laptop/PC (Premium that is, simple one PC version is free). Just need one password to access them all.
Site was hacked last year (surely one of the most targeted sites out there!) but encryption good enough that nothing was 'taken'.
 
TheDecameron said:
The passwords I usually get wrong are on sites demanding a capital in the password. I never remember which sites do or dont require one. It's an unnecessary faff.
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it's not a homunculus making decisions inside the machine. capital and lowercase letters are totally different entities to the computer. if you ignore case, it's like reducing the alphabet -- less choices, easier to crack.



vuk.
 
I just use the random password generator on my macbook pro for sites such as this and for other sites like banking etc I always forget the passwords so I constantly have to reset them.
 
Apple is particularly annoying. Passwords must have a capital, a number, no sequential numbers, and you can't have a password that's been used by you in the last year. There are other rules as well.

The only thing Apple doesn't ask for is the middle name of God. It is of course Paul and goes between Steven and Jobs. What f***wits.

Jack
 
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