What passwords do you use?

[GrimJack]

I just looked at this article on passwords - seems most people use the same password on their banking sites as they do on their other registration sights. Do you use your SavingsAdvice password on a secure sight?

[marvholly]

On chat sites I use a combination of faily initials + birthday.

On baking & cc sites I use a much more complex combination sugested by my work IT people.

[ceejay74]

I used to use the same simplistic password on all sites; now not many sites will accept it, especially sites where security is paramount, So I have a couple different passwords with combinations of numbers letters and other characters. Unfortunately, this means sometimes I lock myself out trying to remember which, so some sites I have to keep making up harder-and-harder-to-remember passwords. LOL.

This does bring up an interesting question that I've been vaguely circling around but haven't given proper thought to:

Those of you who are the sole or main keeper of finances for your household, do you keep all your information (including when bills are due, instructions for maintaining the budget, and URLs and passwords of accounts) in a safe place in case a spouse or other person needs to take over in an emergency? If so, can you explain your methods?

[PrincessPerky]

I use three main passwords with variety (sub out different letters/numbers). Easy enough to remember, but not so easy that anyone gaining one to say here would automatically have access to my bank.

And I rely on the old, 'he remembers everything' system to make sure he is in the loop, even though I do most of the actual 'work' of finances.

Actually for when things are due, I don't remember, but they email me bills, or I get paper ones, or the money is auto sent by my bank. So my memory isn't really necessary for finances here.

[zakity]

We use:

a name

the name of an old computer program

colors


We use variances of these with random numbers in them, random punctuation, and random capitalizations.

[creditcardfree]

OP, simple answer, no.

I have quite a few passwords, and ceejay, I'd love to know a secure way to save the passwords for my husband. He would not know how to get on many sites that affect our finances.

[snafu]

Password: postal code + 3 letters from an old address.
ICE, In Case of Emergency binder, small calendar taped to the front. 1st section tells where to locate important papers. 2nd sections for Finance: banks, investment, insurance agent, bills, due dates, a/c numbers. 3rd Contacts numbers family members to call in case of emergency, Dr, dental, ER @ hospital, on-line info, & phone-a-nurse service, lawyer, accountant CRS contact [income tax]. includes blood type, meds, info needed in case of evacuation.
The ICE binder stored with other binders, bottom shelf of bookcase but a different color and all family members know it's location.

[GrimJack]

OP, simple answer, no.

I have quite a few passwords, and ceejay, I'd love to know a secure way to save the passwords for my husband. He would not know how to get on many sites that affect our finances.

Do you remember those books of made up words (called sniglets, I think)? One of the companies I geeked in had 4 of them and when it was time to change passwords, I would ask 4 different people random numbers and use them to choose the book, page, and sniglet then insert the forth # for one of the letters and add a '*'. I could email the entire staff something like security update 4,2,3,5 - which translated as 4th book, 2 page, 3rd word and replace the 5th character with a 5 eg snig5et*. This was 30 years ago and no hacker had the sniglets in their dictionaries.

Since you are not the target a credit card processing company, you probably don't need to be that random but you and your DH could agree on something along those lines. The geek down the hall at another store collected 'Beanie Babies' so she could put a couple on her desk and know that the current password was 'purplechthulu5' or 'silverskull2*'

[PaydayLoner]

I use a "secure" password for important sites like banking information, and a "fun" one for sites that aren't encrypted and it wouldn't be a big deal to be hacked.

For secure sites, they always say not to use something obvious like a pet's name, but I ran into one secure site where there's a cute cartoon of a dog next to where you enter your password. The site has nothing to do with dogs, but with that subliminal message, I bet there are a lot of pet name passwords there.

[am_vanquish]

Those of you who are the sole or main keeper of finances for your household, do you keep all your information (including when bills are due, instructions for maintaining the budget, and URLs and passwords of accounts) in a safe place in case a spouse or other person needs to take over in an emergency? If so, can you explain your methods?

We do virtually everything on-line, so I setup a Favorites/Bookmarks folder with all of our financial sites - in one place. I've also got a password hint in the bookmark description so DW can figure them out.

All of our passwords are different, but built around 5-6 "core" elements (latin translation of our dog's name, a #-combination that represents an important date, nick-name of our first car, etc). Then we throw in some other quirks like using @ instead of the letter "a" and $ for the letter "s".

So DW just has to know the conversions for "Pet" , "##", "F@mily", and "c@r" --- then she looks at the following bookmarks and knows what to do:
DW Credit Card (Login=DW Email : Password=Pet + ## + F@mily)
DH 401k account (Login=DH Email : Password=## + c@r)

[feh]

I have 4 or 5 commonly used passwords. I use a simple one (no numbers or symbols) on sites that don't keep any sensitive data. I use a more cryptic password on sites that do (account numbers, CC numbers, etc).

[Slandgie]

I have a root word and then add a little variety to it...I think I saw a list recently of the top 100 passwords and sure enough, I used a few of them in the past! Password was one of them....oh how original LOL

[Beppington]

On chat sites I use a combination of faily initials + birthday.

On baking & cc sites I use a much more complex combination sugested by my work IT people.

You take baking very seriously my friend.

[Caoineag]

My passwords have always been secure. They usually have meaning to me and no one else. I usually have 2 in play at any current point. 1 is so secure because its a randomly generated password that I had to use at my school. Its remembered as a series of hand positions. The other is simpler but no one would be able to guess it. In fact, I have had a couple of different IT guys I have worked with and even though they *knew* my passwords, they always had to read them off of a sheet to get them correctly.

Now if hubby needed my passwords, he would be in trouble. As I said, just because someone has used my passwords before doesn't mean they can remember them. At one point I had a spreadsheet for him but he never looked at it. Most of the things we have though would be more than willing to switch things over to him via a phone call. Just because I secure my end doesn't mean accounts can't be accessed by other people via a good old phone call.

[jIM_Ohio]

1-2-3-4-5-6

same combination as on my match luggage

insert spaceballs reference here
I am not going to respond to an online post about what my passwords are. That would not be secure LOL