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.
i have difficult & long unique passwords for each of the important things (emails, bank, any official gov or edu sites etc.) that i keep on a piece of paper in my notebook (with a few backup copies). And i also have 3 degrees of difficulty for my other passwords that i use like this: easy “i could not care less if this account got hacked, in fact i know this password has been leaked in plain text before so whatever”, medium “i’d kinda suck if this got hacked but ultimately it’d not cause major issues”, hard “i do not want this to be hacked”
I try to use passwords that look like sentences. For example you could “SpotifyIsAwesome!2024”. Easy to remember, hard to crack
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Impossible to crack since no reasonable person would think that in 2024!
I’ll do as long a sentence as I can easily remember. Something silly, a memorable movie quote, an explanation of what the profile/app is for, a reminder for why I use the profile/app, goal I have in the area of life I need to use the app for.
Since most password fields require special characters, I’ll slap an exclamation point or question mark at the end to complete the sentence. Sometimes I’ll think to use a sentence that already has a number and type the digit instead of spelling it out. Or I’ll just use a 2 for too or to.
Not-real example based on a not-real goal
idriveaHummer2workinthefuture!
I only remember one password, the one to my password manager.
Bitwarden
Password manager
I use a password manager, and for that I take an uncommon saying, transcribe the first letter of each word in a leet-like code with a couple of modifications. This gives you a very long and secure password.
I have four passwords I memorize: my password manager, my main email, my work login, and a throw away password for stuff that doesn’t matter too much (signing up for giveaways, throw away social media accounts, etc). For everything else I have the password manager create some twenty character monstrosity.
The four memorized ones are all nine letter words with numbers and symbols replacing letters usually always including a comma somewhere as I heard once that a comma makes a password hardet to crack (but, now thinking about it, I don’t know where I heard that and it sounds like a myth).
I pick one gnarly one, I memorize it, and leave it to a password manager.
I remember them two characters at a time.
Theres a couple of passwords I remember, like for logging on my PC and into my password manager
In my experience the best way to remember passwords is to… Get a password manager
I have Bitwarden set up with a feature called Emergency Access. The credentials to access that is just stores in plain text on a piece of paper in a drawer that I frequently use. If I ever forget my master password, I pull out the paper and use the Emergency Access feature, and start the timer, I set it at one or two weeks.
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)
I definitely use a password wallet.
And because I’m getting into the demographic where my peers are going through end of life planning (whether for their parents or themselves), I have written my master password down and keep it with the will/“very important papers”. Whoever settles your affairs will thank you.
Also, since I’ve wrangled with this one specifically, when a loved one passes keep their mobile number active so you can navigate mfa and password resets for their accounts.
https://xkcd.com/936/ Because theres one for every situation.
If you only have one password for all the things you don’t need to be pretty forgetful to forget the word.
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.
It’s easy enough to remember one long password, when it’s prompted often.
Edit: replied to the wrong comment
KeePassXC/DX.
I used to have a couple of letters from the site/service followed by an obscure dialectal word that’s not found in dictionaries with a few characters replaced by numbers and symbols. Those two letters kind of work like salting to keep every hash of my password unique.
Now I just do bitwarden.
Password manager. For things that I forsee I will end up needing to type often, I might choose a passphrase made of actual words. Some password managers can do this, or create passwords made of syllables you can pronounce. It’s way easier to type correctly.
When I’m without a manager, I just look around for random objects, especially things with numbers and special characters.
Before password managers I used to come up with a phrase or nonsense word that was personally significant to me, or an inside joke. Some sort of “catch phrase” that would only make sense to me and maybe my closest friends. Sometimes just an initialism of something I’d know, like my ex-gf Angie (not her real name) had a gap in her teeth, so I’d tell my friends “Angie’s got a gap in her teeth so my dick’s gots to fit!” and so my password would be “Agagihtsmdg2f!”
