You asked for help and lots have chimed in with reasonable suggestions and solutions. If you declare yourself hopeless at this particular task though, then it's not going to matter what kind of help people are offering.


-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io [mailto:main@jfw.groups.io] On Behalf Of Val Paul
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 11:53 AM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: help required for remembering passwords

Hi Steve!

You've just made me feel a million dollars!

I'm just hopeless at making up passwords!


Val.


On 31/03/2018 19:47, Steve Matzura wrote:

When it comes to thinking up password for sites and other things, some
password managers (like 1Password) can generate passwords of any
length based on rules defined by the user. Are capital letters
allowed? Are numbers allowed? Whitespace? Are there rules about
consecutive characters allowed or not? Repeated characters allowed or
not? 1Password can do all of these things, and the others probably
can, too.


These programs are designed to help us non-password-thinker-uppers,
and last I looked, there were about seven plus billion of us, so don't
be put off by what these things can do for you.


On 3/31/2018 12:58 PM, Sieghard Weitzel wrote:

Val,

Some of the most secure passwords are never words which actually
exist. Here is what I do and this might help you.
First, think of a sentence you can remember, the sillier the better.
I'm German originally, but I moved to Canada in 1989 when I was 22,
went to the University of Calgary (UfC) and so on, so here is a
sentence I might come up with (for those who don't know, a
"Squarehead" is a derogatory name from the early 1900's for Germans:

I am a squarehead, moved to Canada in 1989 and graduated from the
University of Calgary in 1994.

Now take the first letter of eadch word using it's proper case (upper
or lower case), use any punctuation (there is a comma after "farmboy"
and a period at the end and you can maybe shorten 1989 to just 89.
Put it all together and you get this password:

Iaas,mtCi89agftUfCi94.

Here you now have a 22-character long password with upper case, lower
case, numbers and symbols and something like that is as good as a
randomly generated password.
Something that long I might use as my master password for a password
manager, you can come up with shorter phrases/passwords for other
things.
If symbols are not allowed which sometimes is the case you can simply
leave them out.

Regards,
Sieghard


-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Val Paul
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 9:36 AM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: help required for remembering passwords

Hi Guys!

that's the trouble, i can never think of one which you could say was
master secure, and if i did, i'd probably have forgotten it about 10
minutes later.


Val.


On 31/03/2018 16:49, Steve Matzura wrote:

Tom, unfortunately you're correct, which is why you mitigate the
risk by making that master password very ver'r'r'ry secure. Granted,
there's risk in everything when it comes to password management, but
since there are so many ways a password, even a long one, can be
obfuscated, it pays to remember just one fancy one instead of half a
hundred shorter ones. Substituting punctuation symbols for letters
is a common method, and since there are so many symbols and so many
ways to use and combine them, even brute-force attacks won't be of much use.


On 3/31/2018 11:26 AM, Tom Behler wrote:

Steve:

Perhaps I'm old and not as informed as I should be, but my problem
with these password manager programs is that if someone somehow
gets your credentials, they will suddenly have access to all of
your passwords.

If I'm in error about this, please let me know.

Tom Behler


-----Original Message-----
From: main@jfw.groups.io <main@jfw.groups.io> On Behalf Of Steve
Matzura
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2018 11:12 AM
To: main@jfw.groups.io
Subject: Re: help required for remembering passwords

KeePass, LastPass, and my particular favorite, 1Password.


On 3/31/2018 10:34 AM, Val Paul wrote:

Hi Everyone!

Recently i've found that i've become terrible at remembering
passwords for different things and sites, does anyone have any
suggestions?


Val.