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Old 06-10-2021, 06:35 AM
davephan davephan is offline
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I’d recommend getting a password manager like Last Pass. It’s foolish and risky to use the same password for everything! If just one site is hacked, and your username and password are available for hackers, then they will start trying the username and password on many bank and retirement sites! If each site uses a different password, you’ll need a password manager to remember the password, since you can’t remember 200 passwords, even if they are hard to guess, but easy to remember passwords. Writing down usernames and passwords in a book is a bad idea. If the book is lost, you have a problem. If the book is over a thousand miles away, you’ve got a problem.

At my former IT job, before I retired, management was very stupid, and used random characters for passwords. They foolishly believed that random characters were more secure. They are actually much less secure, since people had to write down the passwords that were impossible to remember. The passwords on paper could be discovered by someone else.

It’s easy to create a hard to guess, but easy to remember password. For example, V1kingsL0st@gain!
I had to make a password that was about 30 characters long for a backup storage system. I used a modified phrase from a famous book. I could tell co-workers that very long password one time. If the password didn’t change, they would still remember it in ten years after being verbally told the password one time, without writing down the password.

Using intentional wrong answers for security questions, that can easily be remembered is a smart idea. I’ve done that for years.

Two factor logins are also a good idea. The system sends you a text, with a code you have to enter. That system works well if you can copy and paste the code.

For many years, my work retirement system account could only be protected with a four digit password. After many years, they financially protected the users of that financial system with longer passwords that allow upper and lower case, numbers, and special characters.