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Why do people insist on having short (<12 chars) overly complicated passwords? The passphrase: "totallysecretpasswordthatyoullneverguess" (or other similarly-lo
by yan 17y ago
Why do people insist on having short (<12 chars) overly complicated passwords? The passphrase: "totallysecretpasswordthatyoullneverguess" (or other similarly-long phrase) serves as a much more secure pass-phrase than the hodgepodge of non-alphanumeric characters people suggest that good passwords are and is far easier to remember.
The only impediment to decent passphrases are services that limit how many characters your password can be.
- aarongough 17y agoThat's definitely a good point! I've come to the habit of short, complex, passwords simply because of websites that tell you that your password must be between 4-8 characters... Banking sites are notorious for this, even though mandating a maximum password length doesn't really help them.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoModelling the probability of a single typo in a long but simple password shows it more likely than in a short but complex password. Long-but-simple: type 40 characters correctly, each with 99% success (independently) and you're only 67% likely to get it right. Short-n-complex: type 10 characters correctly, each with 98% success (independently) and you're 81% likely to get it right. Choose your own numbers. People will type long passwords incorrectly.
- DanielStraight 17y agoI'm a huge fan of passphrases, but I also use short complicated passwords. I don't find either one particularly harder to remember. For important things, I use long complicated passwords. I'm talking 15 characters of upper, lower and digits, with no meaning whatsoever. That gives 7.7 * 10^26 combinations. Assuming you can test one password per nanosecond, I'm good for the next 25 million millenia. Beat those numbers.