Thinking up good but memorable passwords

[notjustjay]

(Ooh, start of new page..)

For a long time my password on a popular BBS (anyone remember those?? ) was a number ... it was about 14 digits long. It was, in fact, a concatenation of two of my bank account numbers. Perhaps not the safest against mechanical cracking, but anyone looking over my shoulder watching me type it in was sure not going to get it...

 

[yellow]

And, because insignificant letters, symbols, and capitlisation are entirely random, they increase the effectiveness of your password, as it's very unlikely a human will guess at those numbers, their placement, and so on.

I wasn't very clear.. what I meant was:

word465word

is NOT that safe, it is only marginally safer than:

word465

Or:

wordword465

Unfortunately, a dictionary attack can be easily combined with character replacement and:

w0rdw0rd465

isn't all that safe either.

 

[makisushi]

The passwords i use can all be typed with one hand...that is if you are using the ten finger method...

 

[balamw]

Wo4Rd5Wo6Rd isn't too bad though.

I think the point here is that there's safe and safe. If password requirements are too strict, you are far more likely to find them written on a sticky under the keyboard.

B

 

[yellow]

Wo4Rd5Wo6Rd isn't too bad though.

I agree.. that random and complicated enough to be quite safe, mainly because the dictionary word is broken up so it's no longer a word.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I usually just go for "qwerty" for non essential passwords... and then I got a set of "good ones" for whenever that's needed...

But I also like Dogbert's approach:

 

[yellow]

See, that sad thing is.. I've actually HAD users complain about that.
"I keep typing in my password, but they little dots show up instead!" (Mac) Or..
"I type my password and nothing appears!" (Solaris)

 

[emw]

I use the date of the last time I had sex, followed by the name of the person with whom I had it. When I was younger it was a pain to change the password so often, but now that I'm married it's not such a big issue

"Honey, if not for me, do it for the security of our online banking information."