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Crappy Passwords Very Common

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the no-shocker-here dept.

KeatonMill writes "CNN released this story about passwords. Apparently, a group of UK psychologists did a study about password selection, and found that many passwords can be guessed if access to the subject's desk is allowed (the article gives an example of sports memoribilia representing sports-related passwords). According to the study, 50 percent of people use names of family members or pets as passwords."

1 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Store passwords in your PDA (and encrypt them) by flashk · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Store them in a PDA that encrypts and organizes your passwords. A nice product that I use for my Visor (or any PalmOS based PDA) is SplashID. It can have a numeric keypad (for numeric only passwords) to enable you to quickly tap in a PIN to access all your passwords.

    Since I carry my PDA with me at all times, somebody has to pry/steal it off me first before they can get my passwords (they have to crack the my passphrase also). At least you have another level of security (compared to a piece of paper) and you're less likely to lose your PDA. The other benefit is that on a PDA, it's easy to organize and search from hundreds of different passwords.

    The downside to this is that having all your eggs in one basket. If your PDA is stolen, if somebody can does brute force methods to get your password, all your passwords will be compromised.

    That being said, if you have a backup and your PDA does get stolen and you are worried, you could restore your back up to another PDA and quickly change all the passwords before that person has a chance to log in to any compromised accounts.