passwords, the wave of the future.
 

when logging in for work in the morning, i need no less than 8 different passwords to be able to do my job. this does not include optional logins, which take the total to 11. 3 questions:

1. is this excessive? or par for the course? im leaning towards excessiver.

2. anyone have me beat? i would love to know im not the only one who has to memorize 8 different mixed-case alphanumeric passwords, all of which have differnet expiration times, just to do my job.

3. for years they have promised that one day we will have 1 universal login, but i have never seen any progress towards that goal. in fact, its gotten worse. when i started, it was 2 passwords. will it simply continue this way until people are responsible for so many passwords that they _have_ to come up with something, just to keep people productive.

side note: i really hate passwords set to expire every 30 days. especially the ones that dont allow you to use any of your previous six passwords.

~james

My work computer is set up like that...the password expires every 3 weeks. Now that's just silly to me. I'm all about security, but access in and out of our office is controlled, not to mention, the worst anybody can do is fuck up the computer itself...I don't keep any kind of important work records on there.

umm let's see... email password... Novell password for my personal account.. "superuser" password for Novell... root for the email server.. root for the utility linux box... admin for the NT box... helpdesk database password... those are the ones I really use. If you count stuff like mailman or big brother that have their own accounts, I'd have more, but I usually just "su -" into those accounts when I need to.

I let programs keep most of mine for things like websites, e-mail etc. On the other hand that data is encryped and i keep my computer well locked down. I keep my sensative info in PGP files, 4000bit key and passphrase that is a paragraph out of an extremely obscure book, in the middle of it. Total of 6 passwords, mixed case alphanumeric. What worries me is that out logins for VTAC (the system for choosing our uni course applications) cannot be changed, our login numbers are easy to access and our password is made up out of our date of birth, so it is extremely easy to access someone else's account.

I personally live on the edge, I have a total of two passwords in use for my many different accounts. I I just change them every 2 or 3 months.