I readily admit, I don’t use a different password for every account I have. I do have at least 10 different ‘words’ I use – most on a daily basis.
Adding more passwords becomes problematic, because obscure passwords for accounts that aren’t used on often are easily forgotten. Remember, I lived through sixties!
My run-in with Dell today was particularly annoying.
I want to post on Dell’s community forums because of a software shortcoming with this (mostly wonderful) laptop. I went to register using a password often used on ‘occasional’ sites where money is not involved.
My first choice was rejected, as was my second!
AreYouK1dd1ng (that would work)?
At work, one system I use requires me to change my password every month or two. That’s another pain.
Passwords were a good idea when we only had one or two. Now, with large numbers of sites requiring them, it’s time for a better idea.
One thing I never understood–what good is it to change a password? Wouldn’t a bot, or whatever looks for passwords, be just as likely to find your new one as your old one? I can’t imagine that it takes a lot of time and that changing yours would thwart the process. Anyone know?
The idea of changing passwords is to stop someone from cracking them.
The idea is – if a “hacker” (i’m just going to use that word for simplicity..) got his hands on the encrypted password database, you should change your password in a timeframe shorter than it would take him to crack the database.
I’m a Network Engineer. In my line of work security is job #1. In the past, I used to have the same password cracking tool that the hackers use. I’d put my database into it and let ‘er rip. It would normally take it about 90 days of 24/7 CPU cycles to crack most of the passwords. Anyone with a really easy password that was guessed early by the system had their account disabled until they changed the PW.