Thursday, December 21, 2006

Please Sign In

I finally did something that I had be meaning to do for a few years. I wrote down all my usernames and passwords that I use for various things on the Internet. I had a few scribbled down here and there but most I kept in my head. Initially, I came up with 25 logins and 16 different passwords; yes, 16, and no dictionary words or proper nouns either. I am proud that I can recall almost all of them at will. I thought of a few more after a while but decided not to worry about them because I rarely log into those.

When I used to work in tech support you can't imagine the customers who would say to me "my password is _______. I use the same one for everything." People love to volunteer information.

Thanks to bugmenot.com, I don't register at newspaper sites. Before I heard of Bugmenot, I did register with the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. I've been using the Bugmenot Bookmarklet for Firefox for a few years now and it really comes in handy.

I am fairly good at remembering things like passwords, along with phone numbers, addresses, and most numbers I encounter but, like addresses and phone numbers, I figured it was time to write my logins down. Some sites like Linux.org or the Linux Counter I rarely log in to but now I know where my login information is. Like I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I am pretty sure there are about another 10 or so I didn't write down but those are sites that I have no interest in anymore so why bother.

I am guessing that my 25 is above the average. I would guess the norm is around 15. With emails, Ebay, Paypal, Amazon.com, sites people use for work, I think 15 is a good guess. Hopefully, they aren't using the same password for everything and, if they are, hopefully it's not a dictionary word or pet's name. It is difficult to remember all this stuff but it's wise to mix up the passwords.

1 Comments:

At 17:07, Bernie O'Hare said...

Brian, Just discovered your blog, thanks to a comment your posted there. It's very well done. Are you in the Lehigh Valley? I noticed a reference to an LTE to Morning Call. I'd like to give you a link and shout out if that is so. (Lehigh Valley Ramblings)

 

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