I have over 300 different passwords for different accounts. I’m not remembering that many passwords.
Comment on LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Use your brain. Literally. It’s the only safe way to store passwords.
TehPers@beehaw.org 1 month ago
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Well, good luck when it’s your turn in the barrel.
Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I probably have around 100 accounts that I’d need to remember the passwords to, that’s not possible while keeping them actually decent and unique.
icelimit@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Flashcards. Write down your credentials and memorize them. Throw them away willy nilly when you’re done.
passenger@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Hey, don’t use a password manager like KeePass, because brain is the only safe place to store passwords. In order to do that, WRITE THEM ON FLASH CARDS to memorize them and then THROW THEM AWAY
Tell me it was a joke
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Flashcards are your brains friend. They are no joke.
Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
That would work, if I had like ten or twenty of them to remember.
No amount of studying is gonna make me remember almost a hundred strings of 24 random characters.
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Don’t use random characters. Use absurd phrases that mean something to you.
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
It is possible. I have 78 unique passphrases. You only need to train your brain and not turn it over to a machine.
Fifrok@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Sure if it’s possible for you then it must be possible for everyone 😐. I’m sure that this will work for my ass. It’s not like I know from experience that I will forget anything of importance if I don’t write it down.
I keep a journal and a commonplace book (and a self hosted password manager) to remember anything of importance for no reason at all, silly me should have just remembered it. I just need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and stop being lazy duh.
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
You can do it. That’s my point. Yes it takes time. Yes it takes patience. Yes it takes practice. Your brain is an incredible machine capable of so many things, much more by far than a computer. Computers are chunks of silicon. They do basic addition. They just do it so much quicker is all. Yours is superior. Keep it exercised.
I do keep a cheat sheet of clues. Things that I write to remind me of the actual phrase, but I rarely need it. Make a point to memorize 10 a week. Custom photo screensavers (I use jpeg Saver 5.3 by Goat 1000) are great for flash cards. I find writing it out to be the best way to learn, but reading is my second, and listening is third (but rather poor considering I lose focus and miss bits). Try to learn how you learn best and exploit that. I used to have an old braintest that was incredibly accurate. It would tell you whether you were more inclined for audio or visual learning. It also defined your brains inclination to be left hemispheric or right hemispheric in its dominance. It was called brainworks. I think it ran on windows 95. For sure Windows 98SE.
Honestly, a lot of the ones I ended up needing to lookup or reset were the ones that are restricted with a maximum length and I cant use an entire phrase. That just jambs up my plumbing, if you know what I mean.
huey_m@reddthat.com 1 month ago
What composition though? I’ve got well over 100 that are 20+ characters including special characters. I can’t believe this is possible without use of words or something easily guessed.
I do have a few passwords I keep to myself, and even with my method of taking the first letter from a key phrase or set of song lyrics and switching most to leet speak, I still don’t think I could possibly remember more than a dozen reliably.
TehPers@beehaw.org 1 month ago
You can actually generate high entropy passphrases by chaining random words together. You just need to make sure the phrases are actually random and not just whatever comes to your head at the moment.
Naturally, words help with memorization, but memorizing hundreds of these is impractical at best, especially because long-term memory for infrequently used accounts is subject to “bit rot”.
4am@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Not very safe passwords.
jay2@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Oh really? What is it? Please tell.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Plenty of research on the topic. Humans cannot remember a unique, high bit random password for each service. Using your brain means one of the following. Low bit passwords that can be cracked, memorable passwords that can be guessed via social engineering, and/or password reuse where one breached service breaches many accounts.
The only known solutions are all based on some sort of actually random generation of passwords, combined with storage of some sort for all but a very small number of extremely important examples (typically just your password manager vaults password). I actually think a paper notebook and dice or card system is an under appreciated option for a lot of people, which falls under the above.
There is one weird alternative, and that is deterministically generated high bit passwords (via a cryptographic hash function). Unfortunately it doesn’t work well with stupid snowflake sites that have their own “good password” rules, and falls completely flat when you have to change passwords for just a single or few sites for whatever reason.