Password Length And Complexity

[alexander]

How long and complex is your password?

[alexander]

wont vote for myself, but 20+ alphanumeric with special characters

[alexander]

Actually noticed that Paypal is not allowing passwords longer then 20 characters... that was a bummer had to make yet another level of a password, now i have a 14, a 18 and a 28 all alpha-numeric lower case and upper case and special symbols and a special 40+ character key (complexity of which i will not disclose, as well as true length) for my military-grade encryption USB flash-drive.

For those who are wondering about changing their passwords, here are security guidelines to think about:

- All passwords should be or exceed 8 characters, it is highly preferable to be above 12
- It's better to use a number in the middle of the password rather then beginning or the end of one, it make it a lot harder to guess/crack
- Avoid using passwords that people can guess by looking at your persona, passwords such as sport team names, names of pets, names of spouses, kids, etc.
- Avoid using dictionary words or popular culture words
- Use passwords that are typed with both hands (using both sides of the keyboard)
- Use both upper and lower case syllables, as well as numbers and special characters
- For best password strength, use a space or a character that can only be typed using ALT+ method (extended ascii characters like alt+14 or ♫)

[C1ay]

Which one? My password manager has over 50 passwords stored. Some are simple and some are 20+ characters...

[Pyrotex]

Just last week, corporate mandated PC passwords of 12+ chars including CAPs, Nums, and Specs.

It's a good thing I memorized a lot of simple poems long ago. Makes password creation rather easy and remembering them almost effortless.

[alexander]

You didn't get the gist of this exercise? The passwords you use every day and know by heart.

P.S. password managers are for little girls, real men use.... uuuh... paper.... though some men that use plastic can beat me up.... correction, real men use whatever they want

jk, how have you been, clay, haven't seen you (in this section at least) in quite a bit, que pasa?

[C1ay]

I really wouldn't need a password manager if I could just stick to 10 or so passwords but the wide variety of password requirements requires an ever growing list of suitable passwords. I actually use some sites that limit your password to 4 numbers Others disallow certain characters or restrict the length to unreasonable sizes, 4, 6, 8 characters. I'm also not much of a one or two password person since using the same password repeatedly is as bad a habit as improperly formed passwords. All my financial logins have unique passwords that I change on a regular basis.

[alexander]

very true, i knew there was a reason to have a password for my bank accounts be different, then paypal, then email, then a couple of work passwords... but i know what you mean, it gets to be a major pain in the butt to remember that one password you havent used in forever, almost killed my thumb drive like that, i was within 4 tries of burning that chip containing the private key...

[Theory5]

I use a password manager called keepass so I can have long and complex passwords I dont have to remember. But when I do register for something minor like forums, I use a few different 8 character passwords that all sound similar, its easy to remember them that way. And I dont use anything that could relate to me, the passwords are completely randomish.

[alexander]

For basing your password on something do you use a word/name to start with or do you go with a pattern?

for myself i have both, based on words and patterns.

Also do you use a password to protect you password manager? (i'd imagine that i would want to have both, biometric authentication and a password to protect my keyring