Forum Moderators: open
It seems like no matter what I do on the internet these days, it's got to have a password.
I was just trying to read a newspaper article and *bam*, I have to register and come up with a 6 charcter password. What am I protecting in reading a newspaper?
And 6 characters? Even my ATM pin is only 4. I do remember a time when almost all passwords on the internet were only 4 characters. That time wasn't all that long ago.
How soon before we need a password for everything we do on the net simply because it seem vouge to make your visitors have one?
I just installed a password generator plugin into FireFox last night, and was annoyed by the fact it keeps defaulting to 6 characters. A lot of the stuff I use requires a minimum of 8 characters.
But, yah, its getting a bit ridiculous. I have a bunch of accounts at some places, because I end up having to create a new account every time I visit 9once every few months). I don't consider those accounts worth remembering or writing down the password for. So, those places (mostly newsfeeds) end up getting even more crappy-false demographic data to plug into their database.
Just remember folks, the biggest demographic on the net is still Beverly Hills: zip 90210
And my important ones are gibberish. I have to keep them in a secure password storage program on my PDA or I'd forget them all. But I made sure to remember the password to the storage program, or I'd really be up a creek... ;)
All my non-critical passwords are the same. For the sensitive ones I use ISBNs
That's a great idea because if you forget them (or Roboform does), they can always be looked up. Thanks for the tip.
Yeah Mivox, but you'd be up a creek in Alaska, you wouldn't even need a paddle, just some ice skates...
Not this time of year... Ugh. Frigid water, up to the top of the banks with snowmelt. *shiver* No thanks. ;)
I wish I'd planned ahead a little better and made ALL my unimportant ones the same... There are those times when I end up spending a good five minutes with different combinations of my 'standard' u/p combos before I hit the right one.
At the same time (pre-MS days) I worked on systems with 32 and 64 character passwords. These mainframe abilities are gradually getting down to desktops.
It is easy to remember sentences - even nonsensical ones - and that allows long easily remembered passwords. Our memory works on words and sentences not gobbledegook which is why we tend to use use words/dates/names currently and also why they are not secure. Switch to sentences with various capitalizations, with or without whitespace, naturally occurring numbers/dates/punctuation and security becomes very tight.
Beverly Hills: zip 90210
That's the one I use whenever I am at a site and need to provide a US zip code for "statistical purposes". Didn't realize there were that many who do the exact same thing!
90210 - And I was always looking up zips in G when I needed one .... life can be soooo easy ;)
90210
I'm in Canada. 90210 is the ONLY US zip code I know.
90210 is the only US Zip Code I know as well. I always use that when you HAVE to enter a US zip code, even though you have selected "Australia" as your country.
We are not the 53rd state ;-)
With respect to the passwords, bring on HailStorm or the Liberty Alliance. One password, many sites :) Oh yes.
