Can I hear a round of denunciations for web sites that replace

[hedgehog]

the password you type in with a series of dots? If you don't get it right the first time, you're left wondering if you're using the wrong password and/or misspelling it. A special shout out to sites that specify weird rules such as must have at least 12 characters, but none can be "X" or "!" of "m".

[Liberal Veteran]

1. Your password must contain 12 characters, 8 capital letters and 5 lowercase, 14 numerals...

...and 43 special characters, none of which can be ~!@#$%^&*()_+-=\/?><.,.

[Divernan]

2. You cannot use any of your last 5 passwords,of course!.

nt

[Tesha]

3. It's your browser that's doing that.

The web site just tells your browser that you'll be typing into
a "Password"-type entry box.

Hack your browser?

But seriously, the dots are there to prevent a "shoulder surfer"
from acquiring your password.

Tesha

[madinmaryland]

8. "shoulder surfer". Heh! That's my wife!!

:rofl:

[wtmusic]

4. If you don't mind anyone behind you knowing it, that's fine.

The reason why minimum character restrictions are tightening is easy access to password guessing programs. By simply trying the most common choices, they can guess most passwords in a few seconds.

You'd be amazed.

[petronius]

5. Amen! Password rules can be such a pain in the ass, especially for sites

where it really doesn't matter - nobody is ever going to try and crack my log-in ID for the local newspaper comment section, for example, so why do I need an NSA-quality password? :grr:

[Jamastiene]

7. Tell me about it.

They act like the password to the most insignificant sites must be super strong and will not accept it unless you make it so you cannot possibly ever remember it.

[barbtries]

6. my pet peeve are sites

that won't me use a password i've used in the past. i have a limited number of passwords that i can remember for gawdsake.

[Foo Fighter]

9. Here's an easy system to help you remember passwords.

Note: do NOT use this system for any sites where you enter either any personal or CC info, etc. Always always always use unique passwords for each and every one of those sites. That way, if someone does manage to hack a site and "cracks" your code, it's not really a big deal as all they'll get is access to, say, the account you use for posting comments at your local newspaper site and Huffpo or whatever.

That said, here's an easy system to use for sites where it wouldn't really matter if your account got hacked. Just use an easy-to-remember string of characters for the first part, follow that with another character or two, and then use the first 3 or 4 letters of the website URL for the rest (minus the "www" part, of course). That probably sounds complicated but here's an example to show how easy this is:

Let's take the phrase "This is only a test." Taking the first letter of each word gives "tioat." OK, let's swap the "o" for a zero, capitalize the "A" and add "#$" to the whole thing, giving us ti0At#$. Now just add the first 3 or 4 letters of the website to that and you're done. In this exampe, we'll use 4 letters and capitalize the third one. For DU, the password would be ti0At#$deMo and the password for HuffPo would be ti0At#$huFf. Does that make sense?

And whatever you do, do NOT use the above example as the actual formula for your password. Come up with your own formula and use that. You can also change the formula around however you want -- use 6 letters for the "starting phrase", add a single character after that, add another character at the end, etc. Or swap the parts around. Start with the first 3 or 4 characters of the website URL and figure out a formula for the rest of the password. Once you come up with a formula, just use the same one for all the "unimportant" sites and remembering it shouldn't be a problem. It also comes in handy when you switch back and forth between computers and/or browsers.