Internet Insecurity

farss wrote on 9/25/2005, 7:10 AM
Talk about Catch22!
I signed up to this forum back in the good old SoFo days and ever since then, well all my PCs have diligently remembered my password. Gee, isn't technology great. Until a few days ago I wanted to get to this forum from a PC away from the office. Needless to say none of the passwords I thought I might have used all that time ago were correct. No dramas, wait till I get back to the office and I'll get it from there.
Well I just tried that, ha, sure my PC knows my password but it ain't going to give it up to me, oh no, I can't be trusted now can I.
OK, so this forum lets me change my password, except it insists on knowing my old password, foiled again.
More coffee and another bright idea, I can ask it to retrieve my password, just answer a few dinky questions and it'll email my password to me. No sorry, I'm already logged in, so why give me the option to retrieve a lost password, obviously I must know it to be logged in!
So finally I find a PC around here that doesn't remember my password for me, Eureka! Now I can retrieve my password, oops, no not that simple, I have to create a new password. Anyway jump through the hoops and I'm in with my now carefully forgotten password. Bit of a pain of course, I'll have to teach all the other PCs about my new password...except... it turns out the new password I selected is the same as the old one :)
What's that disease us old folks get, makes you forget things, wish I could remember its name, might make a good password.
Bob.

Comments

Edin1 wrote on 9/25/2005, 7:26 AM
That's what I say; my passwords are so secure that even I can't remember them most of the time :-D
If they are secure from me, whom else wouldn't they be secure from? ;-)
Your memory is at least better than mine, Bob, and I think I am much younger than you! Just last week, or this week, I don't remember, but I had changed a password on my sister's computer, and I can't remember it at all! Not even a letter from it!
I think the word you are looking for is senility, but I seem to be more senile than you! Your password was years old, mine is not even a week!
But hey, at least my language skills somewhat still work! I think. Do they?
farss wrote on 9/25/2005, 7:39 AM
Alzheimer's, that's it.
This probably isn't as trivial an issue as we're making it out to be.
Perhaps the answer is some sort of portable data vault with biometric security to store all those 100s of passwords we acquire, iris scanners seem pretty secure I think, the ones that check to see there's blood moving in the veins should be hard to fool.
Of course the big question then is how do I remember where I put the damn thing.
And Oh yes, I just remembered, some of the places I visit keep reminding me to change my password regularly, HA!
Bob.
rsp wrote on 9/25/2005, 7:48 AM
A most useful (freeware) tool can be KeePass which stores your passwords securely in an encrypted database. You can use it with a master password to protect all your pw and login information but it can also be locked with a "keydisc" which basically holds that key for you so you don't even have to remember your pw ......
Ofcourse if you 'lose' the key-disk and you haven't made a backup copy ....all your passwords in the database are lost which brings us back to where we started.

Rudi
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/25/2005, 8:12 AM
if you use firefox (and i think mozilla/netscape) you can view your saved passwords. I had to do the once... :)

You could always write the password down & tape it to your monitor. it's not oyur CC password or anything... those you should just mas the keyboard & use that as a apssword. :D
B.Verlik wrote on 9/25/2005, 10:19 AM
Make sure your deoderant is deoderant and not anti-perspirant. You don't want any ingredients that have the word Aluminum or similar variations in it. (Supposedly known to be a leading cause of Alzheimers)
boomhower wrote on 9/25/2005, 10:40 AM
Biometrics seems to be catching on in the pc world. Even the little usb jump drives are starting to show up with a fingerprint reader on them. I thought about getting a usb fingerprint reader at SAMS but I don't think you can take it with you to another computer. So once you get used to scanning the finger, you forget the password when you are on another computer......there's that catch 22 again.

Microsoft has a keyboard and a mouse with a little finger scanner built in....I think Bill Gates is attempting to covertly gather our fingerprints for some twisted plot to actually take over the world. Still working out the whole conspiracy details....can't say much more on this topic....Big Brother may be watching :-)
Serena wrote on 9/25/2005, 4:34 PM
The aluminium theory has, assuming that my memory is functioning, been disproved. A sure-fire technology for storing and recalling passwords is to write them in a special notebook which you lock away. Old fashioned, but I found it worked very well even in a high security environment (of course the book had to be locked in a high security safe, for which I had to remember the combination, but if I couldn't then that was locked in someone else's high security safe, for which they remembered their combination, etc).

Serena
mattockenfels wrote on 9/25/2005, 6:44 PM
"I can ask it to retrieve my password, just answer a few dinky questions and it'll email my password to me. No sorry, I'm already logged in, so why give me the option to retrieve a lost password, obviously I must know it to be logged in!"

Can you log out, then retrieve the password?

Cheers,
-Matt
VOGuy wrote on 9/25/2005, 8:24 PM
I take a Sharpie and write my passwords on my antiperspirant bottle.
Bob Greaves wrote on 9/25/2005, 9:14 PM
That reminds me about the time ...

oh wait a sec ...

nevermind, forgot what I was going to say.
rmack350 wrote on 9/26/2005, 7:33 AM
Sometimes I enter them as phone numbers in my address book.

Rob Mack