[sporkl]

I memorize all my passwords; they’re different but they all follow a similar format, so it’s not difficult to keep them all straight. There’s a couple variants of the format that I can cycle through when I need to change a password. The format involves the name of the service and a “salt” string, as well as some special character and uppercase/lowercase patterns. It’s quite nice to be able to keep everything in my head without needing to worry about a password manager!

[hasbot]

I used to do that too. When I started to fret about forgetting any one of my scores of passwords, I switched to a password manager. Now I never worry about losing a password, I use more secure passwords, and I change my passwords more frequently.

[pentab]

Are you not worried about compromising all your passwords when one of them is compromised? I assume attackers know they can replace the service name in a leaked password?

[clairity]

yah, i used to do something like the parent poster until i realized that it's a serious reduction in the brute-force search space for a malicious attacker.