let me create my own password, silly system...

[deird1]

Do you know what I hate? Computer systems that keep saying "Oh, no, your password doesn't conform to our guidelines, and hence it is unsafe."

*sighs*

My preferred password, of tqbfjotld (not my actual password, but a good representation thereof) might not have any numbers or capitals in it, but it appears to be* an entirely random series of letters. I'd say it's fairly safe, to be honest.

Certainly safer than the password I have at work - Buffy16 (also not my actual password). It might have capitals and letters, but it's based on an actual word.
Also? I CAN'T REMEMBER THE THING. When I have to write down lots of cryptic reminder notes about my password and leave them next to the computer, it's possible that the purpose of having a password at all has been completely defeated...




* For anyone who's interested: the sample password given is not actually random. It's the first letters of each word in "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs". I like passwords that do that. (And seriously - unless someone's going to write an algorithm comparing the initials of every well known saying and/or list, it's fairly unguessable.)

Comments

[velvetwhip]

Boo to the mean system!!!!


Gabrielle

[redsixwing]

Boo to password-themed security theatre, and here's to passwords that are both memorable and hard to guess mechanically.

I like XKCD's take on it, although personally I use the sort of mental 2-factor described here.

[slaymesoftly]

I've been forced to change so many of my passwords that I've had to make a spreadsheet that tells me my login and passwords. :) At work, we now have to change our passwords every six weeks and cannot reuse one (so no bouncing back and forth between two words)- ever. Life was more simple when I only had two or three - one for things involving money (bank, Amazon.com, paypal, etc), one for almost everything else, and one for a few very private e mail accounts. *sigh*

[deird1]

Yeah, one of my workplaces has non-reusable passwords. I'm going through a large list of superheroes (started with Peter Parker, then moved on to Buffy Summers).

Those password security tips always advise you to use a different password for every single website - do these people have superhuman memories or something? I have a hard enough time remembering the passwords I've got!

[slaymesoftly]

Exactly! Give me one or two - that's all I can handle. :)

[smurasaki]

I do something similar with television shows.


Non-reusable passwords are a good way to end up with a workplace where everyone's passwords are stickied to the underside of their mouse pad, though. That's how it was at an insurance company I temped at, anyway. Very secure.

[zeborah]

I've read articles pointing out that forcing people to change their password cannot possibly have any positive effect on security. (It'd only be useful if the period between changing it was shorter than the period it'd take a computer to mechanically hack it, and these days that'd be like three minutes or something.)

More characters don't even help much; what really helps is length. Personally I like more characters *and* length.

Guess what my workplace and bank won't allow me to do?

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmj3TNmTIKAnYU57nzpk-tTjjnSba8ebCg]

For poorly written (eg most websites) password encryption schemes, a modern computer can try every possible 9-character password in well under 10 seconds. The comment about XKCD is spot on - long phrases are easy to remember and hard to crack.