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Comment by farresito | Hacker News Reader

This always happens to me with passwords. I have trouble remembering some passwords. Yet, when I'm in front of the page and I actually need to get in, either I lose some focus and let my unconsciousness do the work or I won't get it right.

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Heh, a few weeks ago I realised that I'd become unsure about my email password (almost never have to log in). So I logged out and tried to log back in, trying every possible combination, keeping track of them on paper. I had to give up, turns out that I was way out. The next day I wanted to check my emails and typed in the password immediately.

There is the (internet) story of an engineer that could only log in when he was sitting down. Standing up he could not login.

The problem was he had cleaned his keyboard a couple of days earlier and put some keys back wrong. When he was sitting down he logged in by touch typing. Standing up he looked at his keyboard when he typed.

I was trying to share my banking passwords with my wife ("in case of emergency" kind of stuff), and I was forced to admit that I had no idea what my bank password was, even though I log into it several times a week. I had to open a word processor and type my username and password for her all at once. The act of typing my username allowed the password to pop into my memory.

I tend to think it's a good thing that I don't actually know my bank passwords - a password manager is much simpler. Having strong passwords for all different banks is a piece of cake when you don't have to remember them.

This is nice. Some criminals torture you: "Give us your password so we can take your money". "I cannot give it to you! I can only enter it in a stress-free environment when not thinking about it."

(Applies also to those government warrants forcing you to divulge information.)

That doesn't sound like an advantage. I'd rather give away my money than being tortured.

Yes! That same has happened to me. I'm sitting there trying to remember my password, but I can't. But I just try to start typing it and I get it right. I hadn't remembered my password, I'd only remembered the motions.

The only way I can remember passwords (completely) is to have hands on a keyboard. So weird.

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