passwords
will someone please come up with a universal rule for passwords?!
of course, i know there already is a great method for making a nice convenient password, but not all services do that.
what i'm complaining about is the fact that i have three passwords, and i like having three. i have one for fun stuff, one for stuff i don't necessarily trust, and one for business. i change the important ones regularly (or try to), and have a good system.
but then comes these stupid freaking sites that try to be really "secure". some say 8-32 characters. others at least 6. some require you have punctuation. others say no punctuation. some requires caps (WHAT?! why?!). get your freaking rules straight!
then, you go to a site that you remember has a pain in the ass password system. you can't remember which you used (or what variation) to satisfy their stupid criteria. so you try one. nope. then you try another. nope. try a third time and you need to go through all of this other stuff. social security number. mother's maiden name. first teacher. etc. then you reset it to the password you want it to be. nope. doesn't satisfy the rules. okay, i'll add a damn number at the end. nope, already used that one. what?! already used that one?! let me use it again!
gah.
so my argument is that these other sites are far less secure, because they encourage you to write down your password, or use the same one more frequently. if i had my way, every password would be whatever string (bunch of characters) you want. that way, you can change it all the time and it's easy.
or, every system in the world would use open ID.
either way, i've left some businesses because their password requirements are absurd, and it clearly doesn't add to their security.
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