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Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

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Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#211
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a convenience thing back when there were only a few sites on the Internet but it's unreasonable, and just not practical to expect users to memorize several hundred, good, unique passwords for all the websites and apps they'll use in their modern digital life. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple/auth0 help mitigate the number of passwords to remember, but then you are beholden to that company. Not all…

My bigger worry is less getting hacked and more losing access to the password manager: If I use an online one, I'm once again dependant on a third party that can change their terms (or have an outage or get hacked) tomorrow; if I use an offline one, I have to manage a password database which has to be backed up, synchronized across devices, etc. If I use a new device, I cannot log into any account if I don't have an…

If I were nefarious I would attempt to login to websites with variations of pwned passwords and you would be one pwned trivial bullshit site away from having your entire digital life pwned. This form of security is worse than nothing because it gives a false assurance of security AND a false concept of ergonomics in one go.

99.9% of people are going to be unable to remember a reasonable number of variants that aren't trivially deterministic and once things are very similar to another its increasingly easy to confuse them.

You can sync your encrypted password vault between local devices and a remote resource which has access to the vault but not the key for same. At that point is very very hard to get pwned or lose access to anything. This was a solved problem 20 years ago.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#212
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a convenience thing back when there were only a few sites on the Internet but it's unreasonable, and just not practical to expect users to memorize several hundred, good, unique passwords for all the websites and apps they'll use in their modern digital life. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple/auth0 help mitigate the number of passwords to remember, but then you are beholden to that company. Not all…

For silly websites I agree, a password manager makes sense. For banking, identity, and work, I prefer to keep those keys on my person, in my head.

For practical purposes if you tell people to forgo password managers you are just implicitly suggesting they pick bad passwords or write them down or constantly harass support when they forget for the 10th time. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#213

I used to use an e-mail address a terrific domain name that I own. Without publicly disclosing specifics, it was like this: @ .com Thousands of people with this name, who didn't want to give out their real e-mail address, used this e-mail address when signing up for things online. They probably never thought it would be someone's actual address. I finally had to quit using it because of the tremendous amount of e-mai…

At least with email you can change your address. I once had a process server come to my door to serve a summons, it was my first and last name with a different middle initial. When I pointed that out to the process server, he said "close enough" and walked away.

I had never been served a summons before so I was worried about it, I called a lawyer and the lawyer said to just throw the summons in the trash.

Although apparently the guy with the same name as me was going bankrupt or something, his bad debts started showing up on my credit report and I had to mail the reporting agencies to take them off, went on for a few years.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Long and strongly random You can choose to substitute length for randomness. A long enough random sentence works quite well. The hard bit is generating random sentences. I suppose you could use GPT to generate a sensible but random sentence, or just go old school and pick words from a large list and make a sentence with them.

Just battery horse staple it. https://xkcd.com/936/

Sorry, your password must contain: an uppercase letter, a number, a special character, a futhark rune, a unicode astral plane character, and a kanji.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#215
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an idiot sharing my first & last name who never remembers to put his middle initial in his email address, and as a result I see he's an alcoholic, has financial trouble, keeps applying for artist grants, has a social sciences degree of some sort, is involved in local politics, and so on. I could also choose to pwn his online betting, games, dating, and porn accounts any moment I want. I may or may not have ch…

I've got one who keeps forgetting he's got numbers on the end of his email address. He's a sheriff in a southern state. Also an idiot. What's doubly annoying is the US gov is pretty lax at things like unsubscribe links, so I keep getting notifications about his Medicare account that I can't unsubscribe from.

> so I keep getting notifications about his Medicare account that I can't unsubscribe from.

That's forwarding rules are for. Preferably to the email of some judge in his precinct.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#216
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use bob@smith.com for any service that insists on an email address when they have no business doing so (eg public WiFi portals). I used to use bob@example.com to avoid spamming poor Bob but many services now disallow example.com as a domain. Sorry Bob!

I usually use marketin@domain-of-the-website.tld when a website insists on an email address to let me download something. I also curse at the marketing team, just in case.

Oh my God, that's brilliant.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are bob@gmail.com or bob@yahoo.com, I am sorry about the decades worth of product offers, porn subscription offers, forum or blog reply notifications, etc.

I use bob@smith.com for any service that insists on an email address when they have no business doing so (eg public WiFi portals). I used to use bob@example.com to avoid spamming poor Bob but many services now disallow example.com as a domain. Sorry Bob!

I usually use fuckoff@mailinator.com, which usually works (some sites won't let you use a mailinator address).

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#218

I used to use an e-mail address a terrific domain name that I own. Without publicly disclosing specifics, it was like this: @ .com Thousands of people with this name, who didn't want to give out their real e-mail address, used this e-mail address when signing up for things online. They probably never thought it would be someone's actual address. I finally had to quit using it because of the tremendous amount of e-mai…

Finally found the person behind test@test.com!

How about dotdotat@dot.dot.com?

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#219

I used to use an e-mail address a terrific domain name that I own. Without publicly disclosing specifics, it was like this: @ .com Thousands of people with this name, who didn't want to give out their real e-mail address, used this e-mail address when signing up for things online. They probably never thought it would be someone's actual address. I finally had to quit using it because of the tremendous amount of e-mai…

I often used fuck@you.com... but now you.com is active, so, sorry guys!

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just battery horse staple it. https://xkcd.com/936/

Sorry, your password must contain: an uppercase letter, a number, a special character, a futhark rune, a unicode astral plane character, and a kanji.

Also your password must change every 6 months.
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