Storing passwords

[mtbc]

Passwords are tricky to deal with. I like to have fairly long, random ones and to not reuse them. With the various accounts I have this means there are rather a lot of passwords to remember, an especial challenge when some must be changed on a regular basis and others ought to be.

Further, some authentication like for online banking requires various ancillary information: answers to security questions and the like. I do not like to give correct answers to these, nor reuse the answers, so that is even more to remember.

Some people use mnemonics but it is easy for one's mind to blank out on something well-known. I could keep written records in our safe but one sometimes require a rarely used password exactly at an inconvenient time or place. I certainly do not trust password-keeping apps.

I am not proposing or soliciting answers so much as noting that practical password management is a hard problem. Still, as ever, others' thoughts are most welcome.

Comments

[mtbc]

These days I have settled on strong poisoning for written notes: by means of long keys I remember and a non-trivial Emacs workflow I can extract a password fairly quickly from the notes, or a bit longer if only pen and paper. And, for electronic notes, simply hiding them behind open-source encryption whose passphrase is not stored when not in use.

[mindstalk]

Whoah, year old reply!

[mtbc]

Well, things were still settling. (-: