Monday, August 21, 2006

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What is the deal with passwords these days? It used to be make up a name, make up whatever password you wanted. I think the only restriction used to be that it couldn't be the same as your username. Now every website makes up different rules for their passwords, making it nearly impossible to remember which password goes with which site. There are seriously some sites that I have to use the "forgot password" link every single time I try to log in. 6-8 letters, must have 1 capital letter, 1 number, 1 special character, no special characters, can't reuse your last 500 passwords, must change password every 60 days, cannot be similar to former passwords, the list of restrictions goes on and on. The more difficult the sites try to make it for other people to guess your password, the more likely they are to make me NOT remember it. All I want is to use my old standard password and go on my merry way. Anything else is really frustrating. DOWN WITH STUPID PASSWORD REGULATIONS!!!!

7 comments:

Ashley N said...

I completely agree! I have been getting so frustrated with this...I always think I will remember the new, crazy password they made me create but I never do!

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh, you are so right! I'm going to have to create a spreadsheet to keep all of my user names and passwords. Of course when you have something with that much info on it...you guessed it...you need to password protect it!
Mom

Maggie said...

my favorite are the ones that require you to have a number in there somewhere. i can never remember my passwords.

Emily said...

oh the number used to be my "favorite" too until that got too common and they added the "special character". Like i"m going to remembersomething with an & or an @ in it!

nairb said...

I hate these as well. I run up against something that tells me that while my password is different, it enough different from the previous one. Now I use this tool:
http://www.winguides.com/security/password.php

It creates stuff like this:
Password: Safu?5Uc

Phonetics: SIERRA - alpha - foxtrot - uniform - Question - Five - UNIFORM - charlie

Unknown said...

I've never used the feature, but Mozilla Firefox allows you to save all of your passwords, which it will fill in for you when you enter a master password.

Anonymous said...

In a previous life, I did data security stuff (aka-Authorized Hacking). One office I visited, the first password I cracked was that of the IT manager (whose account had administrative privileges over their network & servers). The password was ball.

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why we have secure password requirements, because even IT executives aren't smart enough to make hard passwords. ;-)