Password strength

[John the Monkey]

You could try a transpositional method, like moving the characters one step to the left on the keyboard, so cyclechat becomes;

xtxkwxg#r

You could split the words and put a special character to begin and end too, one between the words and the last half in upper case, e.g.

_xtxkw%XG#R_

Although these look godawful to remember, they work on the principle that you remember the startng word and the methodology rather than than what you type.

Alternatively, this nifty bit of freeware;
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/

Will both generate and store secure passwords - just right click the login you want to use, and choose "Copy Password to clipboard" to paste it into your login field.

 

[allen-uk]

I find it interesting that you find it easy to remember music but not numbers or other strings. Definitely interesting!

Well, Alzheimer's patients can often remember words to songs from 60-70 years ago, when they can't remember their partner's name. And musicians with Alzheimer's can often still play their piano, or whatever, long after they've lost the apparent power of reasoning.

I am, hopefully, a long way from that. Songs that I sang in 1970 are, I suppose, deeply embedded as are the 'times tables' we used to learn.

A.

 

[Melvil]

I just use a random number string enciphered by the combined product of a binary factorization of whatever today's date is.

Doesn't everyone?