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*

[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.