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Comment by illumin8 | Hacker News Reader

Hilarious, and yet, sadly, this must be true. I've been asked countless times by end users why they must login to applications. I think the general population of business (read: average) computer users honestly thinks that passwords should not be required for accessing any information. These are the same type of users that have post-it notes with passwords attached to their monitors and probably write their ATM PIN# on the back of their debit cards.

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I think people get the need for a password, it's just that for the average office job, you have something like at least half a dozen different passwords, with different complexity requirements and different reset schedules. At work I have different passwords for:

Windows login

Expense report system

Timesheet system

Employee information system (where I can view my pay stub, w2, etc)

401(k) provider

Insurance provider

Various ftp or other file sharing services for shuttling data back and forth with clients.

And that's in addition to the all the normal passwords I have for personal stuff. What's worse is most of that is used infrequently so the login process never has a chance to sink into muscle memory. The login process is pretty much forgot/reset password every time I use it.

I run into this a lot and it's quite frustrating, so I just gave up and started keeping everything in a Keepass database. Works well enough.

If you have that many passwords, why not make some sort of base password and then riff off of the base password for everything that needs access (and have a mental sequence for when an item needs a reset)? If your base password is at the highest complexity requirement, the only thing you need to remember is the individual sequences.

I do this for my passwords and it's been working for me for years ...

That's more or less what I do. Not everyone cottons on to this scheme though. With the logins I might use once every 6 months or so, it can still be hard to remember which variation I'm on, especially if it's a "three tries then you're locked out" system.

Worth every penny: http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

Well, think of it from their point of view. They don't need a code to open their desk and they don't need a password to open the break-room fridge. And to them, having something go missing from there is scarier than someone logging in as them and looking at numbers.

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