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by wltprgm 2192 days ago
My piece of advie: Don't take your brain memory for granted

In this era of information technology everyone is bombarded with tons of data that they don't know how to think and memorize

Thinking and memorizing can strengthen your brain muscles but people hate exercising their bodies and their brains

I do use keepass for managing different passwords, but I kind of memorize most of them, only open keepass for storing them in case I ever forget

2 comments

My password manager has 429 entries right now. Maybe memorising is possible for some people who don't live and work on the internet every day. But I suspect most people in tech are in a similar position - unless you're into professional level scrabble, 429 random strings is too many.
How on earth could I remember random complex passwords I use once a year?

I can memorise af58f916cc0cb22193c18f02d3c1cc3e easily, but once you work out (perhaps a keylogger) why that's my paypal password, my google password of 68b31385067f73977c6007cefcddbe74 falls quickly

I think that's a bit of a stretch. You can use rememberable long phrases.

Back in 2012, my facebook password was idontunderstandthepointofonlinefriends2011. I don't think it's easy to forget something like that.

The quoted passwords are md5 sums of paypalformyusername and googleformyusername

Easy to remember, and you'd have to be very determined to get the link between them even if both were compromised, but if the plain text version was compromised then it would compromise the entire system

That's the most secure system I can think of which doesn't involve remembering thousands of complex random passwords. Sure I can remember "correcthorsebatterystaple", but can I remember which 4 words for which specific site?

I have c.600 passwords in one manager. That's not even all of them - some I'm required not to write down, some I keep offline, some I choose to keep as memorable phrases. All those directly connected to ability to spend any money I keep offline (memory or paper).

I'll admit I'm probably an exceptional case but regular users must have 100 or more password after a couple of years online.

Most sites don't allow rememberable long phrases, some services have a password length as small as 12 characters.