mellaka wrote:And I have a handy password saving program that I need a password to get into. I guess it's no help against keyloggers but it feels more safe to me than having my pw written down on paper.
I don't know about you, but if someone breaks into my flat the last thing I would worry about is them seeing a post-it with my Neopets password on it. Not that I have such a thing because I have a good memory for passwords, but I think my point works regardless.
Cranberry wrote:...And I would bet a lot of money that when people are forced to change their passwords every month (like at work or whatever), they just add a number or letter to the end of their old one so they can remember it more easily.
I know someone who reached 50 or more with that, and that was with only having to change every 6 weeks (though you started getting reminders after 4 weeks and would suffer through a fortnight of "no, I don't want to change my password" ten times a day as you logged into various parts of the system". Personally I have a system for work passwords which allows me a theoretically limitless number whilst still being easy enough for me to remember.
If you're nervous about writing down your passwords, make them incorporate memorable things and keep a record not of the password, but a cryptic (to anyone who's not you) clue. For example my earliest password online was a couple of obsolete membership numbers stuck together. Easy for me to memorise the number (I knew them anyway, but even if not it had a good cadence to it) and nobody would ever associate it with a hint of "Local Video Shop" or whatever.
I think the idea with changing so frequently is that if someone has got your password and you didn't notice, it will stop them using it in at most a month. Of course if they got your bank details in that time then a month might be too late.