Password considerations
May. 28th, 2025 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onepageatatimeI've been trying unsuccessfully to come up with a new password.
It's rare that I'm doing this myself: long ago, I outsourced the vast majority of my password creation to my password manager. Makes it much easier to not reuse passwords.
But one of my earliest passwords has stuck with me through thick and thin. (I think I first used it about 30 years ago.) At one time, it was, in some form or another, everywhere in my pre-password-manager days. Sometimes with digits added or a form of punctuation thrown in to get around rules that, at the time, felt pretty obnoxious. There is almost nowhere that I continue to use that password today.
Yes, I said almost.
That one place? My login to the computer I own.
But the time has come to change it. Not because I think it needs to be more secure (though it probably should be), but… because it refers to a part of my identity that is no longer. And in an area of my life where I have been moving in a different direction.
But I don't know what I want to change it to. And it's one of those passwords that I want to be easy to type because I need it every time I unlock my computer, and often when installing things on it. And trying to find that easy-to-type, having-meaning-to-me, and not being trivially easy for others to guess password feels like I may have to relax at least one of those points.
It's rare that I'm doing this myself: long ago, I outsourced the vast majority of my password creation to my password manager. Makes it much easier to not reuse passwords.
But one of my earliest passwords has stuck with me through thick and thin. (I think I first used it about 30 years ago.) At one time, it was, in some form or another, everywhere in my pre-password-manager days. Sometimes with digits added or a form of punctuation thrown in to get around rules that, at the time, felt pretty obnoxious. There is almost nowhere that I continue to use that password today.
Yes, I said almost.
That one place? My login to the computer I own.
But the time has come to change it. Not because I think it needs to be more secure (though it probably should be), but… because it refers to a part of my identity that is no longer. And in an area of my life where I have been moving in a different direction.
But I don't know what I want to change it to. And it's one of those passwords that I want to be easy to type because I need it every time I unlock my computer, and often when installing things on it. And trying to find that easy-to-type, having-meaning-to-me, and not being trivially easy for others to guess password feels like I may have to relax at least one of those points.
(no subject)
Date: 5/29/25 02:59 am (UTC)I have moved to "mixed" passwords, where a password contains three to five tokens, each individually meaningful, that in combination are very unlikely to be guessed. For example (I would never do this one in particular so you get no secrets here :-) ), one token might be the name of a pet, another the location of a memorable vacation, another my first phone number, another an important year... that sort of thing. I guess it's sort of a variant of https://xkcd.com/936/.
(no subject)
Date: 5/29/25 08:52 am (UTC)sigh
I know I should be better than I am on this password, but it's so simple because I've been using it since I connected to the Internet via dialup. And I love the simplicity. But… when it's connected to the Internet from the time I wake until I go to bed most days… I should do something like that with this one: simple to remember, but difficult to guess.
(no subject)
Date: 5/31/25 02:20 am (UTC)