Of course I’m not asking you to give away your passwords. But for those of you who have so many, how do you keep track of them all? Do you use any unique methods?
I know many people struggle between having something that’s easy to remember and something that’s easy to guess. If you keep a note with your passwords on it, for example, it can be stolen, lost, or destroyed, or if you make them according to a pattern that’s easy to remember, the wrong people might find them easier to guess.
In my experience the best way to remember passwords is to… Get a password manager
This is 100% the best advise. But how do you remember your password managers password? I highly recommend Computerphiles tips, I’ve never seen it explained better: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3NjQ9b3pgIg
(Join 3-4 random, unrelated words for a strong, memorable password)
https://xkcd.com/936/ Because theres one for every situation.
how do you remember your password managers password
another password manager
Until finally there is one to bind them all.
And that password is written on a scrap of paper attached to my monitor. Perfect security.
Password manager
I try to use passwords that look like sentences. For example you could “SpotifyIsAwesome!2024”. Easy to remember, hard to crack
Like other have said, Bitwarden.
But I also would like to add: I use the Emergency Access feature in case of forgotten master password.
You basically set up another account and do a sort of “public key exchange handshake” with your main account. Then your secondary account becomes a way to recover your main account.
You can store the credentials to secondary account in plain text on a piece of paper in a drawer somewhere you have a habit of accessing (so you don’t forget where you put it). Its doesn’t matter if a snooping family member saw those credentials, theres a pre-set timer that needs to expire before access is granted. If I saw that timer being triggered, I’d know someone had been snooping, and I can just click deny access from my main account.
So if you somehow forget your main password, you find the paper with your secondary account and use it to request access to your primary account. And well you’d have to wait out the timer, but its better than losing your vault forever and having to reset every password.
I don’t. Bitwarden and that’s it.
I use passphrases from movies of shows that I like. Then add a special symbol and a number that I like.
Thanks for nothing you useless reptile!61
This has 100.54 bits of entropy. I consider anything above 60 sufficient enough
I worked in IT at a company years ago that standardized on song lyrics in a similar fashion:
4 Those about 2 rock we salute you!
I want 2 rock & roll all night
Etc.
Similar, but I just take the first letter of each word, keep proper pronunciation, and turn some into numbers as appropriate.
Two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside, round the outside.
Becomes
2tpggrto,rto,rto.
No, for the record I do not use THAT song.
Wouldn’t it be better to use the full quote, with some random numbers and symbols interspersed?
Depends. I like this because it’s shorter, but still maintains a good level of security, and I’ll never forget it. Technically the full password is stronger, yeah. This also has the added benefit of someone being able to see you type it or catch a glimpse of it plaintext for some reason and have NO chance of remembering it.
Either way, they’re both pretty secure, I just don’t wanna type several lines of… Anything each time I log in.
I have a friend who resets his passwords whenever he connects. So he only remembers one password, that of his email. He claims it’s safer this way.
Theres… There’s something to it, I guess. Make sure your email is secure, and if not even you know your password, how can someone else. Christ, it sounds like a massive pain in the ass, though.
