# Passwords and Asshats **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 8, 2007, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978 "2007-07-08T18:18:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sierra\_Indigo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/21 "2007-07-08T23:10:00Z")
[QUOTE=Astroboy14] That is SO my next password at work… [/QUOTE] I tried that at work one day when I was getting pissed off with the ridiculous password requirements for one of the dozen systems I have to use every day. I got a message back saying that profanities in passwords are not acceptable. So it became “PhuckYou” ---
**Author:** ![cji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@cji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cji)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/22 "2007-07-09T00:46:34Z")
[QUOTE=Astroboy14] That is SO my next password at work… [/QUOTE] Join the club! I do security consulting and often on an engagement we end up cracking the password hashes - you’d be surprised how many passwords are some variety of that. The “I Hate My Job” related passwords are always amusing too… I guess people don’t always realize that passwords aren’t as private as they think. We generally crack the majority of the client’s windows environment (usually between 500-3000 users) in a day tops using simple open source software. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/23 "2007-07-09T01:08:07Z")
I think I’ll just sit quietly over here and not say anything… ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/24 "2007-07-09T02:42:37Z")
[QUOTE=Bearflag70] FuckYou!!11 [/QUOTE] Aw, great. Now I have to go change my SDMB password, and my luggage combination. ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/25 "2007-07-09T02:58:28Z")
I learned this from somebody else here: ZAQ!zse4 XSW@xdr5 CDE#cft6 and so on. No need to memorize the characters, just the pattern. You could generate a 12 character password if 8 isn’t enough: ZSE$rfvGY& XDR%tgbHU\* and so on. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/26 "2007-07-09T03:04:39Z")
How about _14=Ko/GinaFPD_? (runs away…) ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/27 "2007-07-09T03:33:10Z")
You think that i hard? My own password is 15 characters long, including capital, lowercase, numbers and symbols! ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/28 "2007-07-09T04:09:21Z")
A lot of my passwords (I frequent a lot of message boards) are an a certain number of space bar spaces. No letters, no numbers, nothing but a number of blank spaces (the amount known only to me). It works surprisingly a lot of the time and those that it doesn’t, I combine letters with spaces (example: a f a a ) and that always seems to work, but again, mostly just on message boards, I’ve found. That includes on this message board. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/29 "2007-07-09T04:31:50Z")
I had a friend who worked in the ultimate high security job - she published dictionaries. Passwords has to be the usual 2 upper case, 2 lower case and two %$. And they had to be changed every week. Everyone just wrote their super secret code down on a sticky note and stuck it on their monitor. ---
**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/30 "2007-07-09T04:35:37Z")
[QUOTE=dotchan] An easy (?) way to make passwords to pass a “numbers and case” requirement would be to pick a foreign language word and render it in l33t. 😃 [/QUOTE] I generally use a variant spelling of an obsolete or specialized English word, and l33tify that; almost the same as you do. For numeric passwords like voice mail, I use old street addresses, or sometimes the mailbox number we had while I was growing up. Spelling out words on the keypad works too. Luckily I haven’t had to deal with any really insane password requirements. ---
**Author:** ![Bobotheoptimist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/919ad9/32.png) [@Bobotheoptimist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bobotheoptimist)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/31 "2007-07-09T04:48:44Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] I had a friend who worked in the ultimate high security job - she published dictionaries. Passwords has to be the usual 2 upper case, 2 lower case and two %$. And they had to be changed every week. Everyone just wrote their super secret code down on a sticky note and stuck it on their monitor. [/QUOTE] And this is exactly why I never required my lusers to have super complicated passwords. IMHO, security goes down as complexity goes up (past a certain point) ---
**Author:** ![Critical\_Mass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@Critical\_Mass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical_Mass)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/32 "2007-07-09T05:29:06Z")
I have 3 different passwords at work. There is one application that I refer to multiple times every hour. Typical password protocol 1 upper case, 1 lower case, 1 special character… But the brains in IT have it set to lock out after 5 minutes of inactivity. I shit you not - I have to log into this thing 20 times a day. And then the application, in its own buggy way, sometimes decides that I’m still logged in from the previous session and it gets cranky. I can’t log in while I’m already logged in. I then have to phone IT to get them to log me out or I have to wait for about an hour for it to decide that I must have forgotten to log out and it eventually disconnects my session. I want to say a bad word now. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2007, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978/33 "2007-07-09T05:38:59Z")
So I have a great password. It’s got a special character and isn’t in the dictionary, yet is easy to type. No good. My bank won’t accept anything shorter than 6 characters. Another account won’t accept any non-alpha characters. Another has a maximum of 8 chars, so my new 10-char realgood PW won’t work. Another won’t accept numeric chars, so the number I substituted for the special char won’t work, either. You can’t win. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/passwords-and-asshats/410978.md?page=1)