Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - What's your secret for remembering passwords and logins?

warrrreagl · 11-02-2004, 06:16 AM

My wife, my wife, my wife......

Bless her heart, she just can NOT remember all her logins and passwords. She can't remember ANY of them, for that matter. She is a very, very security-conscious person, and makes damned sure that she uses different login names and different passwords for each internet "presence." Usually, when she wants to show me something she found on the internet, it ends up with me falling asleep in the chair behind her while she frantically scrambles to remember her logins and passwords. Her e-mail inbox is overflowing with replies from various websites giving her a new password, which she promptly changes, and then promptly forgets again.

On the other hand, I'm very careless about security. I basically have three login names that I use everywhere, and three passwords that I rotate among the three logins. If I forget one, there's only a finite number of possibilities for me to try before I get it right.

Last night, I was trying to pay our Verizon bill over the phone like we always do when she excitedly told me she'd set it up on the internet so we can pay it that way. Right away, I got a little worried. Sure enough, after she triumphantly marched to the computer and went to the Verizon site, it asked for a login and password. When I saw her shoulders slump, I leaned back and took a nap. Eventually, they e-mailed her a new password (which she changed, of course), and we were able to pay the bill. I told her to write down the new password, but I think her security-sense prevents her from leaving a written trail of passwords for an intruder (or snooping in-law) to obtain.

What do the rest of you do? With an ever-increasing number of sites asking for logins and passwords, do you recycle the same ones in order to keep it simple, or do you go overboard with security (and how do you remember, if that's the case)?

11-02-2004, 06:16 AM	#1 (permalink)
warrrreagl pinche vato Location: backwater, Third World, land of cotton	What's your secret for remembering passwords and logins? My wife, my wife, my wife...... Bless her heart, she just can NOT remember all her logins and passwords. She can't remember ANY of them, for that matter. She is a very, very security-conscious person, and makes damned sure that she uses different login names and different passwords for each internet "presence." Usually, when she wants to show me something she found on the internet, it ends up with me falling asleep in the chair behind her while she frantically scrambles to remember her logins and passwords. Her e-mail inbox is overflowing with replies from various websites giving her a new password, which she promptly changes, and then promptly forgets again. On the other hand, I'm very careless about security. I basically have three login names that I use everywhere, and three passwords that I rotate among the three logins. If I forget one, there's only a finite number of possibilities for me to try before I get it right. Last night, I was trying to pay our Verizon bill over the phone like we always do when she excitedly told me she'd set it up on the internet so we can pay it that way. Right away, I got a little worried. Sure enough, after she triumphantly marched to the computer and went to the Verizon site, it asked for a login and password. When I saw her shoulders slump, I leaned back and took a nap. Eventually, they e-mailed her a new password (which she changed, of course), and we were able to pay the bill. I told her to write down the new password, but I think her security-sense prevents her from leaving a written trail of passwords for an intruder (or snooping in-law) to obtain. What do the rest of you do? With an ever-increasing number of sites asking for logins and passwords, do you recycle the same ones in order to keep it simple, or do you go overboard with security (and how do you remember, if that's the case)? __________________ Living is easy with eyes closed.