DISQUS

jcieplinski · 1 year ago

What I do is use a formula for creating passwords, based on what the password is for. It's still a string of meaningless characters to anyone else, but at the same time, i can figure out what the password for anything should be in a few seconds.

Sure, you could crack my code, I suppose, if you knew three or four of my passwords. But with only one or two, there's little chance you'd figure it out. And since my passwords are written down nowhere, no one can ever compromise my master password list.

If I ever get amnesia, I'm screwed.

I also don't bother with capitals vs. lowercase, and I don't use more than 8 characters. Anything beyond that is overkill, and many sites don't allow more than 8, anyway. So I'd have to remember which ones are shorter, etc.

Ultimately, I take comfort in the fact that no one really wants my personal information, anyway. Not that badly.

webomatica · 1 year ago

Yeah, you both are making me think I should come up with a password matrix
type scheme.

I've found most sites handle the numbers and different cases, so I use them
whenever possible. I also extend the length depending on how important I
deem the site - our wireless router password is extremely long.

I think overall I'm on the paranoid side. Probably because at one time my
Yahoo! SBC account was compromised and someone set up several spam email
sub-accounts beneath on mine. That really annoyed me and I went to the
draconian super extra strong password strategy.

Mike · 1 year ago

I use random passwords for everything except my email. Keychain remembers every password to every site I need to access, which I generally do from my iMac when I'm at home, or my PowerBook for when I'm away from home.

If I'm without anything at all, using a public computer...I generally just check my email, so that's why I keep my email password something I can remember (but still fairly secure).

Adam Varga · 1 year ago

My passwords are combination of a few different gibberish phrases and numbers. Sometimes when I forget a password it takes me a handful of tries to get the right combination. If there ever comes a day when Firefox decides to forget all my passwords... ugh... Lets just hope that doesn't ever happen.

Eric Richardson · 12 months ago

I try to have firefox remember my logins as well on my desktop comp. Sometimes I will use my laptop and will not be able to log in to my accounts, becomes frustrating. Thanks for the article.