I, on the other hand, think that I will preserve the security of my passwords by not telling strangers on the internet the exact procedure I use to select my passwords.
Actually, for additional security, it’d probably be even more effective to lie to everybody about how I picked my passwords.
So, uh, this is what I do — I count the number of characters in the web site’s address. For example, metafilter has ten letters. This corresponds to Neon on the periodic table of elements. The atomic weight of Neon, of course, is 20.1797, which I spell out using the phonetic alphabet, but, and this is important, not using the commonplace NATO phonetic alphabet, but the US Phonetic alphabet from 1941-1956.
Hence, my metafilter password is TareWilliamOboeZebraEasyRogerOboe etc.
For important things like banking, of course, I transpose some numbers so that if anybody ever cracks the code they will be like “Wait, this guy thinks the atomic weight of Neon is 20.71?! He can’t be a very good chemist, I bet he’s poor, why should I even bother.”
posted by Comrade_robot at 6:13 AM on March 31
It’s something to think about the next time you need to create a password.
Comments