Vanity: Fun with passwords

Vanity | June 28, 2014 | Sherman

[Sherman Logan]

I'm having more and more trouble keeping track of passwords on multiple sites. I would appreciate any advice someone might have on an app that would help me to do so securely and efficiently. I'm posting this because Freepers have an astonishingly wide range of knowledge and have helped me a lot in the past.

Here's what I'd like:

Android app that allows me to store all passwords and usernames securely, behind a single master password.

Easy, preferably automatic, syncing to my PC and the cloud.

Access to the stored info by phone, PC or by any computer or other device over the web as long as I have the master password and username.

Auto entry of the password, username and other information such as credit card numbers would be nice, if security is maintained adequately.

Preferably free, obviously, but for the right app I'm willing to cough up a reasonable fee to buy it. No ongoing subscription, though.

[raybbr]

For the least important web sites I use the first four letters of the site, a number combination (always the same), and the same special characters. For instance, FR would be “free1234$$”.

For more important websites I have another set of rules but similar.

[BuckeyeTexan]

You don’t need an app. Use one password. Change it every 3 months. Make it an acronym you can remember and use leetspeak. Something like:

1w4bcd144tcwst

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” ~George Orwell, 1984

But not so famous because then I could hack you. Heh.

Or use three acronyms: one for business, one for e-mail and social media, one for everything else.

[JABit]

Last Pass works well for me.

[Kirkwood]

Probably the safest thing to do is write them down and stick the list in your desk drawer. How often do people break into your home to steal passwords?

[RightField]

I store mine in an Excel spreadsheet, which is named something completely different from anything password related. Within the spreadsheet, the passwords for each site or application are NOT the ones directly in the same row. Only I know the method for storing the passwords within the spreadsheet. So, someone could hack my spreadsheet and even though they saw a password associated with an application, it would not be the correct password.

I also have the spreadsheet itself password protected.

[Ditter]

I have an old worn Little Oxford Dictionary on a table near my laptop and I have passwords written on some of the back pages. There is not enough info for anyone else to know what I am talking about.

[Organic Panic]

12345

[Zeneta]

My “Password” for “Papa Johns” pizza is “PapaJohns” and a few numbers.

For Dominoes it’s “Dominoes**” again, with a few numbers.

and on and on.

All I need to remember is the different set of numbers at the end.

[Pollster1]

“Password” seemed to work well, but sites are now requiring upper case, numerals, etc. Which messed up my system.

That's why I use "Pa$$w0rd". No one could guess, and it meets all the security requirements.

Another option is some variant of "TrOtPtKaBaSnBi" (the right of the people . . . shall not be infringed) with perhaps a 1 for the I or a 0 for the O, with as someone said an _sitename at the end. I don't use a password manager because I don't like putting all my passwords in one place (except here on FR where they are completely secure, of course!).

[Rio]

I use geometric passwords. They are meaningless, but easy to type. I learned this from a teenager years ago. Example:

123edcFT

Try it on your own keyboard and you’ll see what I mean. If they made me change my password, I’d change it to:

234rfvGY

[SoFloFreeper]

Make your password a sentence. Of course you may not get to have spaces, but it still works. Who is going to guess:

“Myfavoritewebsiteisfreerepublicdotcom” ?

or

“Ivotedforthebettercandidatein2012” ?

or

“IwasbornonOctober111955” ?

The number and type of sentences you can come up with are infinite.

[Mygirlsmom]

I struggled with this too after changing all my passwords after Heartbleed. And I was having trouble remembering the jumbled passwords I came up with. SO....I decided I WOULD have fun with it.

I decided I would make an amusing word association with the name of the website I was creating the password for to lyric in a song, a movie or some quote. Then I created a standard convention for how I would type in this phrase. An example -

The first letter of the second word of each phrase would be capitalized.

The first letter e encountered would be replaced with a 3.

The phrase would always end with a !

Here's how I would apply this convention. Let's say the website has the word "mutual" in it....Mutual of Omaha

My password could be:

ourSacr3dhonor!

I got rather silly with my associations, and so I not only remember my passwords, they make me smile.

Good luck.

[DarthDilbert]

Last Pass...I've been using it for a few years works perfectly, set it forget it.

Our family uses it as well. It saves so much time for me having to fix password issues.

[grey_whiskers]

xkcd to the rescue!

Cheers!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

If you find a good app, share it, please!

Rather than using Notepad text files, try

PINs Secure Passwords Manager.

I've been using it for years. One password to all your other passwords, phone numbers, credit card numbers, etc.

It is small, light, simple and will run from a hard drive or thumb drive. The thumb drive is best as it is most portable but keep a backup on your PC in case you lose the thumb drive.

[Carriage Hill]

Thanks; I’ll try it.