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Microsoft Wants To Give You A Rorschach

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sticky-note-to-put-on-your-monitor dept.

Preedit writes "Microsoft has set up a website that uses inkblot images to help users create passwords. The site asks users view a series of inkblots and write down the first and last letters of whatever word they associate with each inkblot. Then they combine the letters to form a password. Microsoft claims it's a way to create passwords that are easy to remember but hard to crack. But a word of warning, the story notes that Microsoft is collecting and storing users' word associations."

5 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmmm .... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA:

    "A century of psychological literature indicates that inkblot associations are intimately personal, and our own user studies verify that users almost always describe the same inkblots quite differently"

    So, psyche 101 was a long time ago, and that's the extent of my exposure to it.

    Do individual people respond to the same inkblots, the same way over time? Or might I see the same splotch in 3 months and associate something else with it? If there's drift over time, this wouldn't be such a good idea.

    Anyone with a better schooling in human psychology care to chime in?

    Cheers

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Wait... by ucblockhead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So they have created a method for creating hard to crack passwords while simultaneously collecting the data to more easily crack them?

    --
    The cake is a pie
  3. Captcha by GreggBz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That site has one of the best captcha's I've ever seen.

    Please select all the cats. Pictures supplied (and sponsored) by petfinder.com. Brilliant. Even HAL-9000 might not be able to do that.

  4. Re:P**n by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I usually suggest to people that they come up with a positive self talk phrase, take the first letter of each word, then replace a letter with a number that resembles it.

    Something like "I am a happy person who loves their life." turns into "Iaahpwlt1", which is long, contains numbers and letters and no dictionary words whatsoever.

    You end up repeating it to yourself every time you log in, which serves double duty as both a mnemonic device and a way to preserve your positive attitude.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  5. Re:Slight problem with this approach by zsouthboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I also highly suggest, right now, that everyone change your passwords to currentpassword x 3 or 4, or more:

    For example, is passwordpasswordpassword any harder to remember than just password?

    But it greatly expands the key space to be searched for anyone trying to brute force...