plastics
Posted on 01/23/2010 7:59:06 AM PST by TaxPayer2000
Wish I could edit my posts! Sigh,,,,,,,,,
plaStics
I have three tiers of password. One for throw away accounts that I don’t care if they get hacked, one for more secure things that I might tell a friend if necessary and one for any accounts that involve credit cards or money. Nobody gets that one and it isn’t written down anywhere.
Even the least secure has upper and lower case, 9 digits and isn’t a single dictionary word.
It’s pretty easy to make an easily rememberable secure password. I help students make them every fall. Here’s what I recommend.
1. Pick two words you can remember, for example: bad dog
2. Put them together and replace the vowels with special characters: b@dd0g (that’s a zero replacing the “o”)
3. Put a special character at the beginning: !b@dd0g
4. Put a number you can remember at the end: ^b@dd0g6
5. Capitalize the first letter of the second word: ^b@dD0g6
There you go. A very secure password you remember just by thinking bad dog and remembering the number 6. The ^ character is above the 6.
I like this method because you can change your passwords as often as you want by simply picking a different number and changing the special character and number to a different key.
The majority are undoubtedly government employees.
plastics
If you have ever ridden a Harley Davidson motorcycle, you have an instant password, the model designation.
Flhtcui2009
That would be a 2009 Electra-Glide ultra classic.
m00se
Once, about 15 years ago, we had a Unix network where I was working. One Friday afternoon, we decided to run one of those password auditing programs on a Sun workstation. It cracked about 25% of the passwords almost instantly. Those were the ones on the short list of common passwords and the ones formed by simple permutations of known user details. Over the weekend, it managed to get about another 50% by brute-force guessing. For instance, we had one developer of German background who thought he was a fox. It guessed his password (fuchs) sometime Saturday.
That is corporate America passing the buck. 30 Applications needing passwords with different character/length requirements. And with a person not supposed to use a small notebook (might get lost) or use a Password Master or use any USB or similar device (cyber secure computer) then we have a problem. Hypothetically speaking (of course).
Thanks nav! But I’m more “spatial” than “special!”
cH33zE!
Poser, and others:
Please discuss the merit or liability of picking one really strong password, and using it for all accounts.
On one hand, if someone figures it out, they can get into all your accounts. But to do so, they would need all usernames, and know what accounts to try them on. Seems pretty safe but let’s discuss.
Or you can use Tom Van Vleck's pronounceable password generator. He advises, The best way to use this generator is to take its output it in ways known only to you. Make some letters capital, or insert punctuation and numbers.
For extra security, pick two that you can remember and combine them.
Looks like there is a answer to multiple passwords. I will have to look into them and select the one best for me, thanks to all that responded to my post.
Let me use fairly simple passwords, but limit my guesses to 100 or 500 or 1000. No human would guess that many times.
I just checked, I have about 90 sites that need both usernames and passwords. That’s a total of 180 combinations, most of which are different.
I used to keep a notebook, but it was time consuming.
I now use RoboForm and it’s a lifesaver. upon installation it collects and stores all your passwords and usernames and stores them.
When you go to a site that requires your username, it automatically pops up and all you do is hit the ‘Fill and enter” button and you’re in. If a password is required it does that same.
You can have long, complecated passewords or whatever you want. It’s kind of like speeddial, after its entered, you can forget because it will remember for you.
I paid $30 online, a one time cost, updates are free.
I’m only a user, I don’t work for them, not an investor, but it’s a lifesaver.
You can also easily print out the entire list.
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