How many userid/password combos do you have to remember?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have to remember userid and password to 5 different work-related websites and 12 personal sites (including 3 for financial matters and 3 more for bills) for a total of 17, and I know there are more that I seldom if ever use (eg, my college alumni association).

Of course it’s impossible to remember them all. (There’s overlap, of course, but I still have to remember which is which.) More and more I’ve been clicking on “Forgot password.” The other day on a work-related site I was told to phone tech support at 1-800-xxx-xxxx for a new password. It took 25 minutes. I’ve now adopted the rather insecure workaround of writing login information on an index card. :eek:

Some sites require, or at least recommend, using special characters in the password; others forbid it. So you can’t use the same information over and over even if you want to (not that it’s a good idea).

Almost none of the websites I use take OpenID…

…and do you want to start a Yahoo Group or Google Group with your friends? Well, they’d better already have accounts, or you’ll be forcing them to add another userid/pw to their own voluminous collections.

Stop the madness!</rant>

How much of this login kerfuffle do you struggle with? Any clever fixes out there?

2

Let’s see…bank, credit card, MMORPG, several game websites, 2 for the game I work for, AOL(I use it like once a year), AIM, 2 home emails and probably others I’m not thinking of.

For work, computer login, email, instant messenger and somewhere about 5 others.

so at least 20.

3

You DON’T want to know…

4

I can’t remember.

5

Too many. :frowning:

Plus, I have to remember the freakin’ reminder cues to get my password e-mailed back to me.

6

Part of job includes supervising our Technical Support who log onto our clients’ application servers. So: hundreds. I keep them in a secure database, but it’s amazing to me how many I actually remember.

I wonder what useful information I can’t store in my brain because of that.

7

For work it’s thankfully been reduced to a single login ID and password combo to sign into the LAN. Once I’m in I’m okay, as they’ve introduced an auto-login tool that signs me into all of my work applications and web portals. If I ever find the developer that figured out that little neat trick, I’m gonna buy 'em dinner or kiss 'em soundly, depending on how cute they are.

For personal use, I have a tendency to recycle username and password for most online communities where I’m not all that concerned about security. On top of that, I have 5 separate logins for online banking… four of which are used for the same damn bank, who apparently think that the secret to good online security is to make it impossible for even their own customers to access their accounts by demanding an ever-increasing combination of logins and secret questions/answers and unique passwords which combine a letter/number/symbol/function key/Xhosa clicking sound. :rolleyes:

8

Personal
Gas
Phone
Electric
Bank
401K
ADP Payroll
Medical Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Car Insurance
PayPal
Ebay

There are several websites I shop from such as Amazon or Walmart but I am not going to list all of those.

Work
Main Desktop System
Citrix Select System
Select System
Citrix DoD System
DoD System
Citrix PPE System
Time Reporting
Benefit Manager
Performance Manager
Deliverables
Genesys
Plan List
View Logs
Insight (test and production)
Daytech System
Reveal System

We also have a code to punch in to get in the building and to print items sent to our mail boxes in the printer.

I am sure there are a couple more work ones that I don’t access that often and have forgetten about.

I think that comes to 29.

9

there’s a nice program called “password safe” you can download.

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

written by Bruce Schneier, security expert.

You only need to remember one password for it, and you can make notes on each of your logins, like “what was the name of your first pet?” if you need to remember those things.

It’s basically the same thing as your index card (which isn’t as bad as you might think it is).

10

I have about 150. I use Roboform to manage them. That is a great program and well worth the money.

11

:smiley:

I have one for work. We have enterprise ID’s/LDAP-aware applications (don’t ask me to explain that, please.) It basically means that I have one ID for everything I log into and one password, regardless of whether it’s the network or our mainframe or our extranet HR site. Well, excluding the root and admin passwords that I could have if I wanted them, but which I’m quite happy to allow my staff to remember and use. :smiley:

For personal, I have one login (or version thereof) I use for almost everything non-message-board/LJ related, and one password (or version thereof.) And one login for MB’s, and one of two passwords for each of those. So as long as I remember that there’s a 9 at the end of that login on that site, and a triple consonant on the end of that ID, then I’m golden.

12

I have almost 100. It’s crazy.

13

Logging on to the computer at work requires 5 different username/password combinations, all of which expire at different intervals - and they wonder why so many in the office write them down. :rolleyes:

I use a different password for every website I belong to, and I have four or five user names that I typically use.

14

I count about 4 that I have to remember:

  1. My bank’s website, which will not allow my browser to save my password. I don’t really have to remember the userid, as it’s my bank card number, but I do know what it is from years of practice.
  2. My primary work password. A single logon gets me into the VPN and the email system and the helpdesk system. Everything else is remembered by my web browser.
  3. My customer support software password. It’s a 3rd party app, and the password is different. I don’t use it often, so about half the times I do use it, I end up emailing the IT guy who supports it to get him to remind me of both my password and my username.
  4. Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. Because people are too scuppering stupid to not check ‘remember my password’ on shared computers, they took the ‘remember my password’ function away.

If we were talking actual user/pass combos that I have in my life, I would conservatively estimate the number at around 150 or so. Most of those, however, are saved by my web browser (more than 100), and most of the rest of them are either all the same or based on a very simple bit of mental logic that allows me to rethink how I arrived at the password so I don’t have to actually remember them individually. This is also the method I use for logging into websites that are stored on my home computer when I’m not at my home computer.

The computer itself (and the list of passwords within it) is also protected by a password, though I don’t recall what it is. It has a biometric scanner thing that I use instead.

15

Ok, the major ones:

Personal:
Banking - 2 different ones

Credit cards - at least 6 - several are almost paid off though (whew) and I won’t have to deal with those sites much longer

Student Loans - 2 different ones

Bill paying sites - two,

Personal emails - I tend to use the same password where possible, but I know I’ve got at least 4 gmail accounts and 2 yahoo that I log into at least regularly. One of these serves as my blog username/password as well

My public library log on information

Plus, Bloglines, flickr, Twitter, Facebook and various other sites that I’m not going to add up, but I’d bet there are at least 10 that I use no less than once a week and another 10-15 that I use at least once a month (beyond those specified above)

Work:

1 for the computer itself, which also serves for my email account.

1 for the vendor ordering system, so I can order books

2 different ones for the catalog system - one system-wide, one personal

One to get into the password protected portions of the website

Another one to get into some other portions of the website.

1 for my campus email account (different from my primary work email account), which also gets me into the portion of the site with my pay stubs and the like

1 for my university blog

2 for different sites associated with professional organizations to which I belong.

My public log on - so I can check to see what books I have checked out and the like.

My email for Former Place of Work, since that’s also where I was hoping they’d put my W2 this year (since it was still active and the like), but no go. But do occasionally log in.
So 41 at a minimum, and that’s not counting the 10-15 “other” that I mentioned earlier. That’s just at first spin across things. I’m sure I’m missing some that are fairly obvious.

16

One primary ID (and a few odd balls for random sites) and a simple algorithm that I use to determine my password for each site. It alows modifications for requirements like 9+ characters, 6 maximum characters, no numbers, must include upper and lower case letters, etc, etc. Only hard part is remembering the sites that I have not converted my ID/PW o the new system.

17

I have 70 but keep them in a text file someplace. I probably can’t remember more than about 10 in frequent use.

18

I use KeePass Password Safe, a cousin of the aforementioned Password Safe, so I only have to memorize its password.

However, I do use a single password on many non-financial sites (such as registering for free online newspaper access) for convenience, and I have that memorized. I also have memorized my XP admin password for convenience, although I have it in KeePass.

19

Lemme think…

Active:
Hotmail
Here
Wordpress
WoW
WoW guild site
Pogo
Pandora
Puzzle Pirates
Youtube

Total: 9

Active but unused:
University e-mail
Angelfire (I can’t believe it’s still active)
Livejournal
Skype

eBay

Total: 6

Grand total: 15

There is some overlap–my usernames are almost all the same or similar, and I have a couple passwords that I use fairly regularly, especially for sites where I know I probably won’t log in often and don’t care if they’re hacked. The more important ones have unique passwords, and are generally used often enough that I don’t forget. Everything else, if I decide to revive a defunct account I have a few options to try before hitting 'Forgot Password".

20

…and exactly why do you want to know? :dubious: