In my observation, most men use vulgar, obscene, profane, or just plain nasty words for their passwords.
I’m guilty of the same thing as StusBlues. I came up with a trusty-dusty minimum-character password with the proper mix of alphanumeric characters, and it’s just plain EASIER to use it everywhere. I’m thinking about getting one of those little pocket “password keeper” gizmos. It looks like it would be better than the little notebook that most folks have.
IMHO, the super-duper systems that demand a 20-character, alphanumeric, at least one capital letter and one symbol passwords that change every 45 days aren’t protecting a DAMNED thing. People can’t remember if they put a “1” or a “2” at the end of the word, and end up calling IT for a reset and finally throw in the towel and write the damned password on a Post-It note stuck to the side of the monitor.
~VOW
I voted yes but not by choice, I don’t get to set a lot of the passwords on applications I have to use. Any personal passwords and accounts where I get to choose are much more secure.
I don’t get to play with Oracle databases these days but back when I did I’d see this: The sysadmin account password on a new Oracle install is change_on_install (think they’re trying to tell you something?). At very nearly every customer site I had access to - it still was.
One of the fault tracking applications I work with generates your password, currently mine is Ienai4l0 - sure enough it is written on a postit note stuck to the laptop.
I used sunshine as a temp password for user accounts I setup on our server about 8 years ago. The account was set so they had to change it the first time they logged in.
It was easy to remember and spell. I moved on to a different word years ago.
My mainframe password was 12345 and abcdef for awhile back in the 1980’s. No way would I use those now. They became unsafe over 20 years ago.
coffee was another easy password 20 years ago that isn’t safe today.
Our voicemail system required a password. I never did figure out why. Someone wants to listen to my phone messages, go ahead. They’ve abandoned it. But I used 11111 and then three months later I was required to change it. So I used 22222. Three months later, I was not allowed to reuse 11111 so I went to 33333. After 55555, I was allowed to reuse 11111 and so I wrote a 1 on the phone and every time I changed I wrote the single digit on the phone.
For my actual passwords, I mostly use a word that is found only in the largest unabridged dictionaries. It was hacked once when I was visiting the CS dept at Stanford U., but I am pretty sure it was done by using a sniffer on the line.
Oh, thank god 4815162342 wasn’t on that list. Now I can continue to feel secure and free from any outside threat by Others. Why, it’s practically my lucky number.
I voted ‘no’ but I think I fibbed. I used 0000 when I paired my phone to my car. I don’t think that’s a huge deal, though.
I wonder what constitutes a strong password? I had occasion to think up yet another freaking password recently (and the bank wonders why I prefer a sign over PIN for my credit card??) and I chose something like my username here except with the i being a number 1 and with two zeros on the end instead of a u. I thought that would have been reasonably difficult for anyone else to think of if they were trying to hack into my account. It had a capital letter, numerals where you might not expect to find any and it wasn’t a real word in any sense of the meaning. The password was declared ‘weak’ however.
I’ve used a variation of at least one of those on the list. For all my non-financial stuff I use the same password and it’s unique to me. For shopping and financial logins I use a more complex password. Work is an easy-to-remember password because no one gives a flying shit to log into their sacred systems.
There have been times I’ve used one of those, but it was after a reset/new creation, and always for systems where you had to change it to something decent upon first login.
Yes. I was lucky enough to use one of those as a password when I was just starting out on the internet, in high school The sys admin ran a password-cracker, found it, and gave me a lecture that made my ears burn but which did ensure that I never used such a password again…
VPI, the largest pet insurance company actually issues press releases about the most popular names of the pets they insure. Bailey was the second most popular dog name last year.
I’ve used a couple of them. Sites these days make you create an account for all kinds of things. If I create an account just to get a free sample, “password” is good enough.
On a slight tangent, here’s the scene I’m waiting to see in a movie. Someone needs a password. They spy on the person keying it in. Aha! The password is B - A - O… Wait, he hit backspace. Ok, so it’s B - A - I - L - L… Did he hit backspace again?!