Password Woes

[Naaman]

Idea for password generation and a safe way to write it down and not be obvious about it:

1) Pick a piece of writting/poetry/fortune cookie you like.

2) Pick a sentence from the work.

3) Use the first letter from each word as your passcode. If numbers are required, use the number of words in the sentence.

4) Keep the passage where you will be sure to have it with you.

5) Keep a spare, different for password changes.


Works well for most places, and you don't leave an obvious password laying on your desk. If you have a pithy daily calender of sayings, you could just write down the date that applies.

Another good idea is to use two easily remembered items (things on your desk, view from window, pet names)add a random capital and join them together with a special character. For example cyLon^vine, I have a Cylon figure on my desk and I can see "The Vine" pub out of the window. Since most IT people will also restrict the number of attempts before locking the system it's good enough.

[Elspeth]

Oh goodness. I have the same dicussion with our IT everytime I have to change my password. He never listens to me though, of course he is my hubby so that might have something to do with it.

Work is the the least of the passwords I have to remember, a whopping total of 3. One for the computer, 1 for ADP and one for our agency system.

I wish the rest of my passwords were that easy. About a dozen bills, 4 email accounts, the bank, and most importantly World of Warcraft. What?

[PepperElf]

when i was working on the switches, we had a requirement come through for stronger passwords etc: like 15 characters+ long, had to include upper/lower case, numbers, symbols. I did them all myself but tried to at least make them easy to type.

regular user passwords were similar. i don't remember if there was a minimum character amount but... upper/lower case, numbers, symbols. i still use that format even on my personal computers

our users weren't too happy at times tho, cos we picked up some software to test passwords and if theirs failed they had to change it. most of the people i saw who came in for this... didn't really understand much about computers

tho on a personal note it was funny. i went home on leave and my nephew grabbed my laptop to play on it and typed in my password, assuming it was my cat's name. I laughed when it didn't work.