Disclaimer: I use a password manager, so please don’t direct your comments at me.
So I know this person that says they don’t use a password manager because they have a better system like… I’m gonna give an example:
Lets say, a person loves Star Wars, and their favorite character is Yoda. The favorite Their favorite phrase is from The Good Place “This is the Bad Place!”. And their favorite date is 1969 July 20th (first landing on moon).
So here:
Star Wars Yoda = SWYd
“This is the Bad Place!” = ThIThBaPl!
1969 July 20 —> 69 07 20
So they have this “core” password = SWydThIThBaPl!690720
Then for each website, they add the website’s first and last 2 characters of the name to the front of the password…
So, “Lemmy Forum” = leum
Add this to the beginning of the “core” password it becomes:
leumSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Protomail Email it’s: prilSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Amazon Shopping it’s: amngSWydThIThBaPl!690720
Get the idea?
The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its “unhackable”, and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.
Is this person’s “password system” actually secure?
A solution to this is to keep adding elements to the chain to create a new password. Like your base password is FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters, and if you need to change it, go for FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters!!!
If you add the same element across accounts when you need to change a pw, it’s still easy to remember, just a few more try when you forget it, it’s still useful against database leaks, and it’s not worse when it comes to targeted hack.
How many sites are we talking about? I have like 600 passwords in my password manager, it would be insane to try to remember each of the rules for when I changed the password last.
Well if you only change your password 3-4 times, you only have 4-5 options to try. You also kinda remember for most website if you changed your password a lot or not, so you naturally try the most plausible option first, at least in my experience.
If you regularly change your password, it can become a nightmare, i agree.