The most common password is...

scott1

link
How did they know my password that I use for everthing

mattmns

I have about 3 or 4 passwords that I use for nearly everything. I plan on changing them soon though, as they have been the same for quite a while.

Moonbear

They recently changed things at our university to require changing passwords every 6 months, and you can't reuse the last THREE passwords. I can't remember that many! So, I've taken to creating stickies on my computer for the ones I don't really give a darn about. So much for improving security. That, or I just keep changing one number...I figure I can just rotate 1 through 4 and then start over again.

Physics_wiz

lol Moonbear. They made me do that when I worked at the LIBRARY!

cronxeh

my passwords are 16 digits long
and no its not my debit/credit card numbers, i just like remembering random sequences of alpha-numeric-symbol combinations

Moonbear

I just have to laugh, or else I'd cry, since they still manage to have security holes a mile wide, but by gum, you better change your password every 6 months.

Glad you popped back into GD...I just met SpaceTiger today, and will be meeting up with Russ Watters later in the week, and still need to meet one more PFer to tie with the Oregon mentors' record gathering of 4. We should meet up around campus sometime!

Evo

Our passwords expire every thirty days and none can be reused for 12 months and they require a combination of upper and lower case letters, at least one number and a special character, and there are dozens of sytems that require different passwords, so we all keep a page long password cheatsheet at our desks because in their misguided attempt at security, they've made it impossible to remember passwords to systems we don't use daily. I can go to anyone's desk and log in as another person.

Physics_wiz

Sure it doesn't look like I'll be going away this summer...no internships for me

Pengwuino

One word: biometrics

wolram

No matter what password i use it all ways comes out to be ******,

Moonbear

Sometimes mine are dots instead of asterisks.

Moonbear

I had to register on a site for submitting grants recently that had insane requirements like that...PLUS the added restriction that you couldn't have a number as the first or last character. And it's the sort of site that you'd use once or twice a year, so yeah, there's no way I'll remember an unusual password for that. Of course, that's opposed to the scientific society I belong to that the challenge is remembering your username, because it's your membership number...they end up having to email everyone their membership numbers when it's time to submit abstracts and register for the meeting, because nobody can ever find the little card they mail with our number on it. But your password there is just your last name, and they tell you that right on the site.

franznietzsche

I do all of mine on the basis of keyboard layout. Its easier for me to remember a sequence of spatial positions and hand movements than a semi-random set of 14 characters from my keyboard. Downside is I don't actually know some of my passwords. I just remember how to type them.

I actually started doing this because of the password requirements for our school email accounts that required at least one non-alphanumeric character, numbers and letters, etc. And it couldn't be a password someone else used. It was a pain in the *** to come up with a permissible one.

scott1

You could use:
password1
password2
password3
password4
password5
password6
etc.

Moonbear

Hey! How'd you guess my passwords?!

Oh, I just remembered the password rules at another university...in addition to the requirements for capitals, lowercase, and combinations of letters and numbers, you couldn't include any word actually found in the dictionary! So, you either had to break the words up with numbers or symbols, or try to think up a whole sentence and use first letters of each word or something like that to try to create something you could actually remember.

Physics_wiz

Enjoy the simple rules while they last. In a few years, all new employees who need passwords will be required to take a cryptography class first.

Moonbear

I think I just need to borrow someone's cat to walk across my keyboard to create my next password.