Passwords
Like anybody on the internet, I've got a lot of
passwords. Keeping track of them is a
bear.
For noncritical ones, I use the
same password over and over. (Noncritical means they don't have access to
anything secret or my money -- like if I sign up for a news service, bulletin
board system, or free online game.)
If
they've got access to private info, I use a more secure -- but not super secure
-- password system, so my password varies from site to site, but in a consistent
way I can remember. For example, my system might be spoonynyt for the New York
Times, and spoonysjmn for the San Jose Mercury News, and spoonytech for
Technorati. Then all I have to remember is the "spoony" part, and I can figure
out the rest.
For my bank accounts and
the like, I use unique and sturdy passwords, like ueiee8e7ej3*. It's hard to
remember these. I've got them locked away in a password-protected database, so
I can look them up if I need to (and that's pretty much every time I do online
banking).
I wish on my personal
computer, I could use just one password for everything, and my computer would
translate it and send the real password and username to the website. When I try
to log into the New York Times, it would ask my username and password, and I'd
type in "Joe" and "ueiee8e7ej3*". and my computer would know to send the New
York Times a randomly-generated username and password -- say, "dfjdka" and
"c4cmaiuw". Anybody who gained access to my New York Times account name and
password would find them completely useless to get at anything
else.
Of course, anybody who had
physical access to my computer and knew my big main keychain password would be
god, and would be able to impersonate me online. But mostly that's me. And if
I only had the one password to remember, I could make it a good
one.
Does something like this exist
already? It should.
Filed Fri - November 18, 2005, 04:06 PM in
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