The Password-By-Heart Test: What Websites Do You Use The Most?

September 18th, 2008

Like many Internet-addicted-social-media-early-adopter-wanna-bes, I have accounts at a long list of websites. Simultaneously, I’m security-concious and therefore, every website has its own unique password with a hard to remember mix of capital letters and numbers in random order. I also clear cookies each time I quit Firefox, which is multiple times a day. This forces me to retype the password each time I log back in again.

The two exceptions to this rule are an Apple ID password which is set in iTunes and the Apple TV (making purchases more convenient), and Twitter, for the Twitterific client on the iPhone. I don’t know those passwords by heart because I don’t type them in often enough.

The amusing thing is, for certain accounts, I’ve typed the passwords enough times that I have them memorized, almost instinctually. This is despite the long string of meaningless characters. And what sites I’ve memorized their complex password for, is a good measure of high usage on my part.

So these are the sites that pass the password-memorization test, and which I therefore am using a heck of a lot, on a multiple-times-a-day basis:

  • Google (GMail, Google Reader, etc.)
  • Netflix
  • FriendFeed
  • Reddit
  • Our bank
  • This blog

I’d also add the aforementioned Apple iTunes and Twitter for regular use, and our Macs at home. But out of an estimated 50+ accounts I’ve signed up for - that’s it. Not too surprising, actually, but a statement that the vast majority of websites I once signed up have a barrier of entry just for logging in.

What does your password-by-heart list look like?

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Viewing 5 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    What I do is use a formula for creating passwords, based on what the password is for. It's still a string of meaningless characters to anyone else, but at the same time, i can figure out what the password for anything should be in a few seconds.

    Sure, you could crack my code, I suppose, if you knew three or four of my passwords. But with only one or two, there's little chance you'd figure it out. And since my passwords are written down nowhere, no one can ever compromise my master password list.

    If I ever get amnesia, I'm screwed.

    I also don't bother with capitals vs. lowercase, and I don't use more than 8 characters. Anything beyond that is overkill, and many sites don't allow more than 8, anyway. So I'd have to remember which ones are shorter, etc.

    Ultimately, I take comfort in the fact that no one really wants my personal information, anyway. Not that badly.
    • ^
    • v
    Yeah, you both are making me think I should come up with a password matrix
    type scheme.

    I've found most sites handle the numbers and different cases, so I use them
    whenever possible. I also extend the length depending on how important I
    deem the site - our wireless router password is extremely long.

    I think overall I'm on the paranoid side. Probably because at one time my
    Yahoo! SBC account was compromised and someone set up several spam email
    sub-accounts beneath on mine. That really annoyed me and I went to the
    draconian super extra strong password strategy.
    • ^
    • v
    I use random passwords for everything except my email. Keychain remembers every password to every site I need to access, which I generally do from my iMac when I'm at home, or my PowerBook for when I'm away from home.

    If I'm without anything at all, using a public computer...I generally just check my email, so that's why I keep my email password something I can remember (but still fairly secure).
    • ^
    • v
    My passwords are combination of a few different gibberish phrases and numbers. Sometimes when I forget a password it takes me a handful of tries to get the right combination. If there ever comes a day when Firefox decides to forget all my passwords... ugh... Lets just hope that doesn't ever happen.
    • ^
    • v
    I try to have firefox remember my logins as well on my desktop comp. Sometimes I will use my laptop and will not be able to log in to my accounts, becomes frustrating. Thanks for the article.
 

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