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Old November 22nd 19, 11:05 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 10,881
Default Password storage

KenK wrote:

How do you save your passwords? Use just one for all sites? Use the
availaple password saving apps? Other?

I'm thinking of putting them on note paper and storing with my list of
telephone numbers. Most are currently forgotten.


I use an algorithm that I can remember. It contains the TLD (.com,
..org, .net, or whatever, and in normal or reverse order) but without the
period character, my initials (can be reversed or in some other order,
but the same order everywhere), the site's domain (first N chars, last N
chars, 2nd to Nth chars, or whatever you like), my birthdate (day and
month, or month and year, in that order or reversed, or the entire
string reversed), and some punctionuation characters around each
substring. Some of the substrings (separated by punctuation chars) are
uppercased, or mixed upper/lowercase, but which chars are upper or lower
are alwasy the same. Many sites require 2 uppercased chars. One of my
substrings is all uppercase and another is mixed case. That's just one
example of a pattern that is memorable after you decided on one.

I come up with a pattern that is memorable. When I visit a site, the
algorithm is the same but the domain and TLD change, so the password is
unique to that site. The substrings for each piece of data can be in
any order, but it's the same order at every site. You come up with a
string that has substrings of data you can remember and/or are unique to
the site you visit.

Alas, some sites force you to change passwords, so I might have to
change the punctuation characters between substrings, or comply with
some other oddball requirement of the site. So, I saved all my
passwords in a OneNote notebook. That gets synchronized to my
Hotmail/Outlook.com account. Each section of that notebook is password
encoded. It is NOT the same password as my Hotmail login. So, a hacker
would need to get past my Hotmail account's login and then figure out
the password to my OneNote notebook. If I need to look at my passwords,
I'll have to remember the one to my Hotmail account and the password for
my OneNote notebook. I use the Hotmail account quite often, so that
gets reinforced often to keep in memory. The OneNote notebook's
password is the same as my desktop PC's login, and my PC's password
isn't used anywhere other than on that PC. Since my PC is setup to
lockup after an idle timeout (screensaver w/login required), that
password gets drilled into memory. Since my Hotmail account and PC use
strong passwords, getting past 2 strong passwords to get into my OneNote
notebook would be damn tough.

If you want availability of your passwords wherever you are (i.e., via
the Web), there are lots of ways to do that than using passworded
OneNote notebooks in passworded online accounts. For example, Avast
(which I no longer use) has a password manager that's available via Web:

https://www.avast.com/en-us/passwords#pc

If you use Google's Chrome web browser, they also have an extension for
their service.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...diiojmdlmlkoik

If you have an Android smartphone, they have an app, too:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...asswordmanager

If you have an iOS smartphone, yep, they have an app for that, too:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/avast-...s/id1037779526

My scheme got setup before I bothered hunting around for online
protected storage of passwords, so I don't bother investigating them. I
only did the search on Avast Passwords, because I remember seeing
mention of those apps or features when I used to use Avast Free as an
anti-virus on my desktop PC. My guess is the apps and service are
oriented to storing passwords; however, you also mentioned phone numbers
(wouldn't those be in your phone)?
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