Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How To Protect Your Passwords From Amnesia?
Phopojijo writes "You can encrypt your password library using a client-side manager or encrypted file container. You could practice your password every day, keep no written record, and do everything else right. You then go in for a serious operation or get in a terrible accident and, when you wake up, suffer severe memory loss. Slashdot readers, what do you consider an acceptable trade-off between proper security and preventing a data-loss catastrophe? I will leave some details and assumptions up to interpretation (budget, whether you have friends or co-workers to rely on, whether your solution will defend against the Government, chance of success, and so forth). For instance, would you split your master password in pieces and pay an attorney to contact you with a piece of it in case of emergency? Would you get a safe deposit box? Some biometric device? Leave the password with your husband, wife, or significant other? What can Slashdot come up with?"
Tattoo your safe deposit bank number (the bank of which required your biometric identity to get into the vault) on your arm. Maybe you should also tattoo the name of the bank (and address?) there, I seem to remember that he had problems remembering he had a safe deposit box there.
For work-related passwords, my boss has every right to know my passwords if I get sick
Hmm, no, he has every right to access your professional data for sure, but this does not necessarily require him to know your passwords. Back when I was doing IT for a 25-odd people company, I'd briefed people that their password was like their signature: personal, and if some manager asked them their password, they should redirect the manager to me (happened a few times, each time the request was baseless and rejected, and when there was an actual problem, it was solved without anyone having to let anyone else know their password). Heck, I'd briefed everybody never to tell me their password.
At work, when one password expires, I update all of my system passwords to match whichever new password I pick.
I used to come up with clever, difficult to guess passwords. Now that I have to change my password every three months, I just +1 my previous password. Farscape20 is what I was at before I switched shows.
If my job really expects a challenging password, then it should stop forcing me to update it so frequently. I am simply not imaginative enough (nor do I have the desire) to come up with something unique each time.