I'm sick of passwords.

O

OldEngineer

Member
Location
San Diego, CA
I am sick and tired of trying to remember passwords for everything. What a waste of time.
I bet everyone on this forum remembers the good old days when we didn't have passwords. Sure, we had a few credit cards (Diner's Club, American Express, etc.) that sometimes needed a 'pin' number. But not many people used them and the pin# was conveniently printed on the back of the card.
We only needed to know a few padlock combinations to protect our school lockers or bikes or other physical stuff.
We didn't have the internet 'til 1990's which ushered in the era of passwords and world class time-wasters in the form of creating & recovering passwords (and reading email).

In the past, I have read articles about how to make strong passwords, so of course I made all of our accounts with "strong" to "very strong" passwords. Just thinking up new passwords is a great time-waster. And of course, the stronger the password, the more time you will waste trying to recover it.

More recently I read an article about the most used (and most easily hacked) passwords which included "password", "qwerty" and varying lengths of "1234...", "11111..", etc. The list also included birthdays, phone#'s and kids/pets names. It made fun of people (read as old people) who used weak passwords.

As a member of "people", I now understand why we use these simple passwords - primarily because we don't have the time to waste. So, I'm changing all our passwords to "passwordX" (where X is a number from 0 to 9 for a stronger word).

Next, what to do about email...
 

Google now provides a 'different' password should you care to use it. It is simply a random set of numbers you make up yourself. It works for me.

But, you are right about what I read into the thread - the web did not make our lives easier, but harder instead. It did so by creating its own 'need'. Now you can't live without it in so many ways. We really got sucked in. I am forever amazed now how people are just so glued to their smartphones. When out walking the dog and watching intently the screens of their smartphones or texting while driving through a school zone. They fall or hit something and then indignantly scream they are going to sue. What does stupid look like if not that?
 
OldEngineer said:
As a member of "people", I now understand why we use these simple passwords - primarily because we don't have the time to waste. So, I'm changing all our passwords to "passwordX" (where X is a number from 0 to 9 for a stronger word).

Next, what to do about email...
Click to expand...
I don't know of any website I've been to lately that allows a "simple" password. They all have to be at least 8 characters long, have one upper case letter, one lower case letter, one number, and one special character. I really have to write these passwords down somewhere. How can I remember kfdh%BNR82.
 
I have mine written down, and they are made from words that have some meaning for me. Because i am a senior, and know I won’t live forever, I want my family to be able to access my accounts once I am gone; so having a list of the accounts and passwords helps for that purpose also.
Most of what I have an account for online is not anything that a hacker cares about anyway, so I really do not worry about it very much.
 
Passwords are very important, especially if you do any purchasing online, or any financial activity. Hackers steal millions every year from online users. I keep an address book near the computer with several different passwords, and update/change them regularly.....better safe than sorry.
 
When all this started I figured I could use the same password for everything, no such luck. Here I am twenty five years later needing a book to keep track of all my passwords and constant changes. Such a hassel!
 
I only have one p/word now and that's for logging in here - apart from emails that is, and I've had the same for years so won't forget them.
I live a simple life... I don't buy anything online nor bank online (I'm assuming those need p/words?), so my brain remains 'unaddled' by having to remember loads 😊
 
Way back when we had steam driven desk tops, they said don't write your passwords down. Anyone could used them. So, I kept them on my computer, which decided to stop working. And all my passwords were safe, except you needed a password to unlock them.
Since then I keep a written list. And on some rarely used sites, the passwords won't work any more.
 
Not much an issue even for someone like this hi tech person that has had to deal with passwords for decades.

My device resident files with sensitive information as password files are encrypted. There are numbers of apps that can do so. I use aescrypt because I can run it from either a GUI interface or command prompts. Thus no need to carry around paper cheat sheets. Such paper notes may seem like a good idea but that is only so as long as one does not carry such in a purse, wallet, or vehicle, all of which are prime targets of thieves. But one will need to remember and or somehow securely store outside devices at least that one password to decrypt aescrypt so that alone requires wise consideration.

Using AES Crypt - Advanced File Encryption for Windows

-----------------

Command-Line Option

To encrypt a file, you simply enter the "aescrypt" command with the approrpiate command-line arguments.

Suppose you have a file called "picture.jpg" that you would like to encrypt using the password "apples". You would enter the following command:

aescrypt -e -p apples picture.jpg

The program will create a file with the name "picture.jpg.aes".

When you want to later decrypt the file "picture.jpg.aes", you would enter the following command:

aescrypt -d -p apples picture.jpg.aes

The program will create the file "picture.jpg", containing the contents of the original file before it was encrypted.

Using AES Crypt on Windows
Graphical User Interface (GUI) Option

You do not need to be an expert to use AES Crypt for Windows to securely encrypt your data files. To encrypt a file, you simply right-click on the file you wish to encrypt, select the "AES Encrypt" option, and enter the desired password. AES Crypt will produce a file that cannot be read by anybody who does not know the secret password. It is as simple as that.

AES Crypt will produce an encrypted file with the same name as the original file, but with an ".aes" extension.

Note that when you encrypt a file with AES Crypt, it does not delete the original file. Generally, people encrypt files for the purpose of sending a file securely via e-mail or copying it to a portable storage device that is more susceptible to loss. As such, most people do not want to delete the original. However, you may certainly delete the original file: just do not forget the password. It is impossible to recover the contents of an encrypted file if the password is lost.

Decrypting an encrypted file produced through the GUI process described above is just as easy. To decrypt the file, you simply right-click on the encrypted file, select the "AES Decrypt" option, and enter your secret password.
 
Devi said:
I got a little address book and wrote everything there. Very convenient and useful.
Click to expand...
aah, another one who does exactly what "they" say you never should do... write them down. about the only place i ever truly log off of is my bank. everything else is always ready... except when it ain't. had some sort of computer "thing" going on and had to login to every single place i usually go to. had to look each one up in my little address book. had a few that balked and made me change the PW... i use pencil!
 
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