I can’t remember my *!!@@@@***ing password

Re Gabby…

Reminds me of a techie of a guy writing for the Independent who was on to this sort of complicated stuff of a mere password…. you’d think he was on to something so ambitious as if wanting to seek/(prevent) access to Fort Knox and spirit all of the contents out…… for want of a better comparison.

If negligence cannot be proved, any loss sustained in a third-party financial transaction falls entirely on the other side.

I’ve had to come up with various stategies over the years to remember passwords and not write them down:

If you always use a computer from the same location (office / home), you can use passwords associated with objects in your field of vision. OK, so “desk”, “chair” are a little too simplistic, but many objects can be combined: “SaltPepper” or include the manufacturer’s name or serial number, e.g. “Leitz5504” is a stapler on my desk. Visual signals stimulate the memory and I find I can recall passwords, even after an extended break away from the location where these objects can be seen.

If you need to change passwords on a regular basis, use a themed series of something you might be interested in or knowledgable about: “Americano1”, “BloodyMary2”, “Collins3”, “Daiquiri4”, etc.

Another approach to to combine a day, day, month, year in some permutation and place a small mark next to the date in your diary. You just need to remember your date pattern to reconstruct the password, e.g: OctWed5, Y11M09D05, W05O11 are all passwords constructed from today’s date.

Provided no one knows what strategy you use to create your passwords, they are pretty secure and certainly better than using your pet’s name, favourite colour or birthday.

Some good suggestions in the above posts.
Its a pity that password rules differ between sites so much:
– max no of chars can be as low as 8,
– must include , UC and LC character or even special character.
– no special character allowed ie ” & ! #”
– must include number.

I agree the Credit/Debit card extra password challenge when using it online can be a real pain – have you ever tried to change the challenge message and password ?

I remember once using passwords based on patterns on the keyboard. I just had to remember the current pattern and the starting position. It all went wrong when I visited our Paris office – their French AZERTY keyboards had keys in a different place and I did not know my password, just the pattern on a QWERTY keyboard, so I has to survive a week computer-less.

The moral I took from this is that simple solutions become complex!

I gave in to trying to create and remember different passwords for home and work especially if you have to change them so often as I do with many of the providers I use. I now use Roboform Everywhere which means I have a set of passwords that I use on my work computer, home computer , phone, in fact anywhere! You have to bit the bullet to pay some money and store your passwords in one place and to use the system remember 2 passwords, one for your account, the other a one time login when you use your computer. The only one I do not store there is my bank details, so just one to to remember!

It makes life a lot easier as it has its own search bar so typing in the beginning of the site you want to go to matches the site, click it opens a browser window and once loaded completes login and password details. Now I switch off local browser passwords and rely on the application to do its job. There are also free versions if you want to try them out http://keepass.info/ but I like the support and ability to sync that Roboform.

Interestingly its easy for me to see how many different sites I use between work and home and this totals up to over 250 sites with a user-name and password combination of which each can there own password. At home I also use Affinion Fraud Protect software so if someone ever managed to take control / view my screen they would not be able to see the passwords been typed via a key logger or view the browsers password manager to view any passwords.

err.
I guess your referring to the verified by visa or mastercard systems?
This is a little link on the same page which allows you to reset your password by knowing your date of birth. I guess you can still remember that??? 😉
This works really well as my wife forgets here passwords all the time.

Regarding passwords. I’ve had two good suggestions.
Create a master start of the password and stick a suffix on the end for each service. You can even write the suffix down so you only have to remember the single master password. This is similar to the first suggestion on this page.
Or, use the first letter of song lyrics. This creates a strong password of random letters and is fun to remember. You can even write down clues as the password is not an actual word and really hard to guess…

What is the point of them as many don’t communicate with Macs fairly causing severe wastage of time.
Beware I have had technicians accessing my computer remotely which means there is no security or privacy .
Today Amazon the Internet site have used details given for former purchase to send me 2 bundles of ink cartridges had been looking at but decided not to take up as no paypal. They were informed before dispatch that didn’t want but went ahead regardless
.Worse still the Pollce [ Call centre] say not a crime & bank say have to wait till tomorrow but are not interested in fraud against us .
Why should I have to waste valuable time & money sending back to a call Centre that will probably not refund.As for Visa Disputes they side with biggest bank account wasting moths & months……