Picking User Names & Passwords: Tips & Tricks

[wolram]

I guess every one frequents more than one forum, some forums seem to accept any old user name, but some can be a pain in the situon, type in joe blogs and it will come up with, joe blogs is all ready used but you can have joe blogs 1278467, i mean as if i could remember that,
then there is pass words, every easy one to remember is not accepted, so you have to use one that is not, wright them all down you say, well i did but can not remember where.

 

[mgb_phys]

I use my initials followed by _site, so mgb_phys for here.
Not very imaginative but it handles the cases where mgb is already taken or there is a minimum length.
I used to sysadmin a bunch of machines and it was the only way to keep track of which userid was for which server.

 

[turbo]

I happen to know how wolram derived his user-name, and I heartily agree.

 

[DaveC426913]

I use a string of numbers to ensure my username's not taken on any board I visit.

My passwords are unique to each site.but they are easy to deduce knowing my algorithm. And I change them semi-regularly.

 

[redargon]

Hey Wolram, there is software out there that stores all your usernames and passwords for different sites and then you just use a "master" password to access that information to use as you like. I have personally never used it because I don't like keeping all my eggs in one basket. I'm not one for changing my password very often or having algorithms and stuff, but if you just take a normal word you're used to using and add some captial letters and numbers in between and it's pretty much uncrackable.

The only thing I worry about is my credit card details, but I don't give a poop if someone hacks my PF account, for example, and starts posting replies (they'd probably bet better than most of mine anyway )

My username is an old Quake nick that I used to use and it's very uncommon, so I haven't had many probs.