[Ham-Computers] Passwords

[KD7JYK DM09]

"What, if any, pgms have you guys used and what do you think of them?"

None, and here's why...

Everyone says you need a password, and it must contain certain 
characters, or have a certain format to be secure.

Since 1987, I say HORSES--T!

And, here's why...

I have used the same password for almost everything since 1987.  I never 
write it down, and because it's the same, never need to, since I've 
never forgotten it.

How secure is it?  Perfectly flawless.

You see, nobody knows what it is, or what it goes to, so nobody can ever 
guess what to do with it in any one of the trillions of potential 
applications it may be used.

To a computer, a password is just a bunch of 1'a, and 0's, so making it 
complex means absolutely nothing beyond a few moments of processing 
time.  To a human, it could be any combination of anything ever known 
for all of mankind.  Chances are, and the past 32 years have proven it, 
they will never figure it out, ESPECIALLY if it's simple, since that's 
"not secure", and therefore never looked for.

Aside from that.  Just write them down.

But, OH NO!  That's not secure!  Baloney.  It's as secure, if not more 
so, than anything else.  Use one or two passwords at most, write them 
down if you need to but, DON'T write down what they go to.  If anyone 
can get to your sheet of paper, they can probably get to everything else 
you have of value as well, so it would hardly matter, except they STILL 
wouldn't know what the passwords mean, so in fact, more secure written 
down, than most anything else you have, that can just be accessed, and 
taken outright.

This doesn't mean I haven't used some sort of password program or 
organizer.  I did, around late 1990.  It was more trouble than it was 
worth, and made a simple task complex, involved, and reliant on 
something else I had to worry about, and keep track of.

Kurt