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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

I don't want some complicated random password. At least where I live, my router password is a very modest security shim to protect against very random casual access. If I have a visitor who needs WiFi access, I want to give them an easy password to type in.

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So change it afterwards. Good defaults are important. If someone doesn't change it, it's important that they be on the right path instead of...this one.

(See also: opt-in versus opt-out for retirement plans, organ donation...heck, even this from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43144611)

You can always change the passwords. I was bringing this up as a solution to the default passwords issue. You don't want to have a static default password used by everyone, so you need the initial password to be randomized. People are dumb so you need to print it on the device. There is no need to default to cloud-based authentication to close the default password security hole.

If it's too hard for a guest to type in a password, you can also have them join by scanning a QR code. Obviously this works better for phones and tablets with QR scanning built into the camera, but that's what guests are frequently using.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code#Joining_a_Wi%E2%80%91F...

Wifi password != admin password. The admin password should be random and then you can change it when you take ownership of the device.

> I don't want some complicated random password.

It doesn't have to be complicated. A random passphrase can be much simpler and include significantly more entropy: four to six words plus a six-digit number. Any password generator worth a damn can generate something like this.

Correct! No need to horse around with passwords. A staple approach saves your mental battery.

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