Another IT bod
Like many others here, I have worked in IT support as a call monkey providing support from the complex to the mundane (such as resetting people's passwords when they forget them).

You'll find on the Tuesday after a bank holiday weekend the number of calls at the beginning of the day is much larger than a normal week, mostly with people wanting their password reset.

It seems they can be trusted to remember the password without typing it in for two days,but not three.

It's ONE fucking password - most IT service desk people have to remember at least 6 or 7 for all the systems they support (in one job it was about 16), and they can't remember one, which is normally as simple as "monday1" or "sunshine5". How do these retards remember their way to work in the morning?
(d371ght back again since, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 21:11, 7 replies)

Hmph
If your systems didn't insist that we change the password every month, we'd use one we could remember :p
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 21:53, closed)

Passwords 101
So you need a nice secure password that you can remember? One that you can change every month without forgetting? Then take note:

Choose something you can remember- maybe your dog's name. Let's call him Rover.

Transpose two of the letters. Let's make it Rovre.

Add a number to the end- maybe the year. It's 2008, so let's make it Rovre08.

Add a letter to the end. Start with a, then use b, then c, and so on. So you start out with Rovre08a, then next month make it Rovre08b, then Rovre08c and so on. And in January you can make it Rovre09a.

Take this tip and pass it along to whoever you know who can't keep track of their fucking passwords because they're too thick too busy to remember them on their own.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 4 Sep 2008, 22:11, closed)

Password changing?
Required due to security risks.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 4 Sep 2008, 22:54, closed)

What's the risk?
That I'll become bored with my password and blurt it out?

I'm genuinely curious. Is it that people might need two months to hack it?

Surely if someone knew it, I'd know about it from them fucking around with whatever it was a password to?
(LickOutTheJamsMotherfuckers!, Thu 4 Sep 2008, 23:41, closed)

Changing passwords
M'sieur le Loon - which is a smashing idea, 'cept last place I worked in (that had such a policy) wouldn't let you change the password to something that had an n-length string in common with your last one. Nnnnngh.
(ChaRleyTroniC is invincible with his chips and cheese, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 14:50, closed)

@loon
My top tip for setting a difficult-to-crack, easy-to-remember password =

1) Take your favourite nursery rhyme, song lyric, poem stanza etc

2) Turn it into an acronym using these rules:

-Use the first letter of each word for each letter of the password, i.e. Jack becomes a 'j'
-substitute the word 'and' for an ampersand '&'
-subsitute the word 'a' or 'at' with an @ symbol
-substitute -words that sound like numbers for the number itself, i.e. to--2, free--3, for--4 etc
-Capitalise the first letter

Now you have a password that almost certainly meets your company's password policy. Here's one I made earlier:

J&jwuth2f@pow

Which is of course "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water"

Reminders can then be left on your desk, in your notebook or wherever in a form that you find easy to remember, i.e. "password is Jack and Jill"
( chart cat has an itch, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 15:56, closed)

funny how memory works
But ask them to remember the 11 digit phone number and the "phrase that pays" for the local radio prize line and suddenly they're amazing...
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Fri 5 Sep 2008, 22:39, closed)