[Discuss] A Little OT: The Password Post-It

[omegahalo at gmail.com (Chris O'Connell)]

I provide them with KeePassX, but even that seems to complex for most of my
users.

I guess what I'm looking for is a non-technical solution or idea of how to
keep users from having to write the passwords on postits.

On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 12:15 PM, <jc at trillian.mit.edu> wrote:

> Chris O'Connell wrote:
> | I think we, as IT professionals, have to acknowledge that not all of our
> | users are as savvy we are.  Not everyone is going to be capable of
> keeping
> | their passwords straight.
>
> Hmmm ...  A quick check shows that my personal password file has over
> 200  distinct  entries.  Some of these I haven't used in over a year,
> but the accounts are still there.  One reason I haven't used them  is
> that  lots  of  software  now  remembers  them and fills in Password:
> fields for me.  But even if this weren't happening, I still  couldn't
> remember that many passwords, unless I made most of them the same. If
> anyone claims that they can, I'd be very skeptical without a demo.
>
> So my level of savviness is probably irrelevant; I'd be surprised  if
> very many people of any kind can remember so many nonsense words.
>
> And, despite whatever strategies I may try  to  use,  most  of  these
> passwords  do  have at least some stuff that's difficult to remember.
> This is due to the way that admins insist on password rules that  are
> designed  for security, but which are different for every site.  This
> forces me to use passwords that don't follow  any  personal  pattern,
> meaning  that  I  have  little  choice except to store them somewhere
> that's easily available when I need them.
>
> The real problem isn't that users write down  their  passwords.   The
> real  problem  is  that  system  admins force the users to write down
> their passwords.
>
> (Hey, maybe I should use that as a sig for a while. ;-)
>
>
> --
>  The fewer jobs a tool is designed to do, the better it does each of them.
>     _'
>     O
>   <:#/>  John Chambers
>     +   <jc at trillian.mit.edu>
>    /#\  <jc1742 at gmail.com>
>     | |
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-- 
Chris O'Connell
http://outlookoutbox.blogspot.com