Password Rules

Post by prawn » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

georgefox wrote: post #70

kijin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine the horror of having to recite any password to an actual human being. What kind of company asks you to tell them your password by phone? "No, the backslash. The one that leans backwards, no, I mean, to the left. Above the Enter key." Surprise, the backslash is not above the Enter key on Canadian bilingual keyboards.

I assume the support person is asking the security question, but the user entered his mother's maiden name as -K$%3{Tm,fsj$k8L or something similar.

Post by jebblue » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

dekz wrote: post #79

its_so_on wrote: post #36

I swear one day we will see. "Unfortunately time and again we have come to observe the inability of employees to follow simple rules during password creation. For example, despite our warnings, employees often create a password containing more than one consecutive non-numeral; other employees attempt to createa a password consisting only of numbers, only of letters, or an insecure mix of numbers and letters - e.g. 5:…

> The password must be exactly 8 characters long. This is probably the root cause of bad passwords. In the case of Average Joe, he is now having to choose something memorable which is 8 characters long. 'PassworD'

Post by ecoffey » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 3:04 AM UTC

shard wrote: post #102

namityadav wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see why you had to mention that the call center worker was "Indian". If you hadn't, your entire statement wouldn't have made any sense. Right?

Well, the implied ethnicity of the poster is non-Indian, so in addition to the embarrassment of having to spell out obscene words, there's the cultural gap as well. The poster can't judge how offended the call center worker was, and probably feels like he's poorly representing his culture. I've had many similar experiences, especially since I've been living in Korea recently, and it's very uncomfortable not knowing e…

Post by dvhh » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 3:23 AM UTC

unfletch wrote: post #42

ecoffey wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not have helped your specific case, but I recently bought 1Password, and updated all my security questions with randomly generated 16 character string answers, and just put those strings in the "notes" section of a website. So when they do challenge me I can just copy/paste them in. It's been awesome!

I've used 1Password generated passwords for years. You're right, it is awesome, but only until you have to relay one of those generated strings to a support person over the phone: "...left curly brace. No, it's like the parenthesis, but squiggly. Are you using a regular keyboard? Hold shift and type the left square bracket. The square one. It's to the right of the P..." Nightmare.

Post by superuser2 » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 3:48 AM UTC

dvhh wrote: post #118

r00fus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong passwords. Password manager. Separate Accounts. Keypass or 1Password (which I prefer on OSX) are quite good. I use gmail + 2-step auth. You can configure it to be quite paranoid.

You always have the imap/pop backdoor on Gmail , which does not use a 2 factor auth.