Thread: Password practices

The ebay intrusion(and other intrusions) got me thinking about a good topic for discussion.

How do you manage your passwords?

Personally, I use and advanced software that manages and generates them all for me. I always max out character generation, alpha-numeric and special characters included where possible.

I only really need to remember one or two.

You?

I'm that guy that has a spreadsheet with the name of the forum/website and the login and password. As time goes on I develop interests in other areas and find yet more websites/forums that require a login. It's nice to keep track of the old ones as you never know when you want to pop back and dig around a little.

Of course if someone with bad intent got hold of my spreadsheet, I would be pretty hosed

Originally Posted by MattCB

Of course if someone with bad intent got hold of my spreadsheet, I would be pretty hosed

Well, what about fire, flooding, natural disaster of choice, etc. Yikes.

I usually just change my old password back to my same old password. I'm good for a couple more years before the next major fabricated scare/distraction. Been doing this for the last 20 years and nothing has ever happened. ymmv

I wonder how many people are putting off replying to this thread, because their answer is something along the lines of "Change my password, why would I want to do that? Just another thing to remember!" ?

I tend to use a password-generator. all my machines sync them in an application called 1password. invaluable and very very safe. They are changed across all my login sites about every 3 months or so

For passwords I don't have committed to memory for sites I don't frequent too often I have them written down and stored in a safe, not like SWMBO who has hers written on post-it notes throughout the house.

Crazy world out there,Suppose I should not be putting my PIN # on the back of my ATM card with a sharpie

You mean you can put something other than your birthday?

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Crazy world out there,Suppose I should not be putting my PIN # on the back of my ATM card with a sharpie

definitely not, plus when using a debit card it is wiser to use it as a credit vs. debit, especially if you use it to gas up your car.