[jcynix]

>where do you keep secret.txt exactly?

Hidden. Encrypted. And the passphrase is: at 5,21 which is the 5th line on page 21 of your favorite book. Which you have more than one copy of, because you like it that much. And you need copies to lend. Or you have the PDF from Gutenberg.org?

And 5/21 might be the birthday of your first child, or your wedding day, or whatever?

It might be a favorite quote, like "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Augmented by the above date if needed?

[smsm42]

Hidden where? Are you writing it on a post-it and putting it on top of your screen? Are you keeping it in your wallet? In a safe? What if you lose it or your house is flooded?

> And 5/21 might be the birthday of your first child, or your wedding day, or whatever?

How sure are you that you'd remember all that scheme for 20 years? How about 50 years? Some documents may be relevant for a very long time. What about if you need more than one key? What about if you need to give access to one document to specific set of persons?

Once you consider all the scenarios that can happen through a lifetime, you start to understand why managing all those complexities correctly is not trivial. And that's why people pay third parties to do it for them. It's not because encrypting a bag of bytes is hard. It's because of all the things that surround it.

[seb1204]

A post it with master password on the fridge seems much safer to me than simple repeatedly used passwords. Computer can get hacket but the post it on the fridge is harder to hack.

[raincole]

> And the passphrase is: at 5,21 which is the 5th line on page 21 of your favorite book

Yeah, it's one of those things that you'll forget in N years. That's exactly what prompted "where do you keep secret.txt" question.

[sayamqazi]

Some people are lucky with memory that works extremely well with numbers. My memory is average but when it comes to numbers, I remember serial numbers of certain products, enrollment numbers etc from more than a decade ago.

HP-L170 (A monitor I bought) QW4HD-DQCRG-HM64M-6GJRK-8K83T (Windows XP key) 10396-9 (My enrollment number for board exam)

I remember a bunch of long-ago-abandoned phone numbers as well.

[smsm42]

I could probably remember one or two things like that key, but retaining it over the years would be questionable... I used some of my favorite quotes as the passphrases for some of my crypto wallets, and once spent an annoying week when it turned out I misremembered one of them and lost access to some bitcoin. Not a huge value - it's about $1k worth now - but still unpleasant, and I had to spend quite some time figuring out how to recover it (fortunately, it worked). So since then I'm more careful about "I'll surely remember it" thing.

[catlikesshrimp]

>>My memory is average but when it comes to numbers...

Where I live, memorizing a 25 char alphanumeric is not average. It's not more, either.

[jcynix]

As of now I have to care for my (digital) backups, that is, I cannot ignore them for N years. I had to copy things from discettes to magnetic tape, from tape to hard drives, etc. I have to periodically check my backups if they are restorable. That's life.

It's the same for documents, as for secrets, which I have to transfer from one medium to another, I have to check that I remember secrets and passphrases. And places. As I already said, that's life.

[seb1204]

You can also choose to let it die, or get forgotten.