All Of Those Passwords Driving You Crazy? Here’s a System to Help:
Posted by alharlow on March 9, 2011
Passwords and “pins” seem to be needed everywhere and with everything we do nowadays. If you don’t have a system for remembering and recalling all those passwords easily, then it must be driving you crazy.
Here’s a Simple System for Devising and then Remembering Your Passwords:
Come up with just four (possibly five) passwords, one for each level of security. These are the only passwords you’ll have to remember. The key then is to just associate one of the four passwords with the level of security needed for what your about to log into. For example, you’re bank account website you know needs extreme security, so this is the password to recall. Here the list of passwords to develop for yourself:
1) Low Security – one you can give out to anyone and don’t care
2) Medium Security – one you would give out to your co-workers, perhaps, and family members without any concerns
3) High Security – this is where your personal information is stored and you would have anyone like your immediate family to know about it
4) Extreme Security – this is for things like your pin for your debit card (which you shouldn’t give to anyone except your spouse, perhaps) and your bank account website password.
Now for those of you who have secrets not to be shared with anyone, including your spouse, you can invent a fifth password. Of course, when your wife or husband reads this blog, she or he is going to ask, “Do you have a fifth password?”, and what it’s used for. But just claim the fifth about the fifth. :)
When Changes are Demanded:
Some places require that you change your password every 90 days or so. This is in following with good practices when you have stored credit cards in Quickbooks, for instance. To handle this in a systematic way, pick a character to use. Then, in the case when every 90 days you must change the password, repeat the character in the password representing which quarter you’re in. For instance, the first quarter of the year might be “YesWe%Can”. The second quarter would simply be changed to “YesWe%%Can”. Or, you can move the position of the character such as “%YesWeCan” the first quarter and “Yes%WeCan” the second quarter.
You can take this further, where you use one schema for every password. For instance: your low security password can be “fatso”; medium - ”fatso%”; high – “%fatso%” and extreme – “%fatso%E1″.
Everywhere you Turn
No doubt, having a system to remember passwords so you can easily recall them makes a big difference in trying to simplify our lives. Everywhere you turn now requires a password. Here’s my short list of where I have to remember a password:
1) My bank account websites,
2) My debit cards,
3) My credit card websites,
4) My personal and company insurance websites,
5) My business websites,
6) My cell phone account website,
7) My advertising websites,
8) My multiple Google account websites,
9) My MSN developers website,
10) My Microsoft partners websites,
11) My accounting passwords…
Need I go further? For me, the list is very long. I bet if you thought about it, you would come up with over 20 instances easily where you have to use a password. So coming up with a method such as what I suggest here, has become vitally important.
Security
If you store your passwords in writing in one location, such as in an Excel spreadsheet, for instance, make sure it’s locked down and secure. You should tell your loved ones where this is and what the password is to open it, or where the key is. I myself store passwords for websites I use in Outlook, under the contact name I associate with that website. I make sure the “lock” is on, so only I can access this information. Of course, a security expert will say anything stored on the Internet is vulnerable, but I’m confident in the security at iNamics and how locked down our private network is, to be able to do this with confidence.
The experts say not to use birthdates for passwords. These are the first thing criminals check. All they have to do is look at the driver’s license that came with the wallet they stole. Also, you should also be cautious about using real words in a password. It’s better to use a nonsense word, like “hkbgfu”. (Good luck remembering it, though, so I don’t follow this advice.) While being conscientious of how secure your password is, an easy way to remember it would be to use your old school locker combination with an old girlfriend’s name spelt backwards. Also, read the comment below from Bill Russell, who suggest that when you write a password down, insert bogus characters to make the password worthless if someone were to find it.
Also, you need to choose carefully which odd characters you use in your passwords, because some websites don’t allow certain characters. For instance, Bank of America does NOT allow the characters $ < > & ^ ! [ ] to be used. However, Bank of America does allow the following characters: @ # % * ( ) + = { } / \ ? ~ ; : ” ‘ , . – _ |
By typing “password generator” into Google, you can find lots of password tools for generating, saving and keeping passwords. I myself haven’t had a chance to evaluated any of what’s out there, so I can’t make any recommendations yet. If you have any suggestions what to use and what works for you, submit a comment below.
If you want to learn about how to come up with an extremely secure password, click here to read a very good method provided by Lee Barnhouse of ITechSolutions in Hudson, Ohio.
For a password strength meter, check this one out, which seems to be trustworthy and not filled with spyware: http://askthegeek.us/pwd_meter/index.htm
Conclusion
The trick to not being driven crazy about passwords is to devise an easy system that works for you, and once you have it, the stress in your life will be somewhat reduced, I assure you.
The good news is that a lot of websites now have the ability to let you use your commonly used log-ins, such as from FaceBook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, etc.; so there’s a lot less to remember. This trend is continuing, and here at iNamics we’re suggesting using this technology to our customers, which requires special API code only a developer can implement at this time, but I expect this to get easier.
If you have any questions or want to know more about my system for remembering and easily recalling passwords, just call or write. I would also be happy to give group talks about this subject to anyone who asks.
The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, a leader in website development, hosting and computer repair in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com. This blog is also published at http://inamics.wordpress.com.
Comments: (Submit your comment here)
Comment Posted By:
Bill Russell on 3/10/2011 1:53:31 PM
This is a great article, thanks. I’ve been using a similar system for about 15 years. Another idea to add is a tip on how to write down passwords in a secure fashion. Choose a word, name or number string – one that you do NOT use in any passwords, and insert it in the middle of your password when you write it somewhere. You’ll know to exclude these characters when you enter your password. Example: My dog’s name is Ace, and I do not use his name in any password. One of my standard passwords happens to be Otis1210#P. If I want to write my password down for my Amazon account, I write my username then PW: OtisAce1210#P. Now if someone happens to find this written anywhere, it’s worthless to them, but I know to drop the “Ace”. BR
Comment Posted By:
Al Harlow on 3/10/2011 2:06:03 PM
Thanks Bill for the comment and contribution. I think it’s very helpful to adapt a practice such as what you suggest, to keep passwords secure when written down.
