Passwords?!?!

[Sioneld]

What's the deal with passwords? I couldn't log in the other day so I reset my password and then found I couldn't log in again. Now I find to change my password it has to be TEN characters long with mixed case. Now, I have several default passwords - they are 6 characters and 9 characters long. I guarantee I will continually forget my password to the board now as I have NEVER had to come up with a ten character, mixed case password. My old password was 6 characters.

Why the change? Can we please have a normal number of characters and not mixed case if we must have longer passwords suddenly? Cause like I said, this is just not going to work for me, I'll have to use the forgotten password just about every time I login now.

[kiwi33]

If you are using Firefox as a browser you can tell it to remember all of your passwords.

I guess (I have had no input into this) that it is a security thing. A "strong" (= effectively un-crackable) password should have a mixture of letters, numbers and special characters with none of the letters forming an English word.

[caged bird]

my password is shorter than that so i'm not sure why yours has to be so long. i'll take it to the other admins and see if we can work out why

[Jomomma]

If you have the same password that you had before the board switched over then everything is fine. Once you try to change, the new system requires the longer mixed password for security reasons.

As has already been said, you can ask your browser to remember your password if you are on a secure computer. Also, could you create a password that is a variation of an older password by putting numbers in place of letters and duplicating letters in certain places? I know it is kind of a pain but it is meant to reduce the number of opportunities for someone to hack into your account

[Poppies]

I have a suggestion to make.... When I have a new password to remember, I write it down in 'code' somewhere. I don't write "My BUS password is......."... but say, for example, that your password is OrangeJuice... you could write in your diary or a notebook "Buy more OrangeJuice" - it wouldn't mean nothing to anyone who happened to read it, but it would be there as a prompt for you till you're more confident with it.

[Proximity]

Hey,
the mods and admins have had a little discussion, and we agree that even if we could put the password requirements back to the way they were before, we'd rather not. Strong passwords are important for the security of the board. Decreasing the requirements for a strong password would be more convenient for some of us, but it's just not worth decreasing security.

I actually think 10 digit mixed case passwords are pretty common now, and not unusual or not 'normal'. It's just times moving on.

The suggestions that others have made for remembering or creating a longer password are really good ones. What kiwi said about what makes a strong password is true, but if you really don't think you can remember a password like that, you can always add to the password that you already had, in a way that's easy to remember. Others have given examples, but another is that if your password used to be 'chicken' it could now be something like "BIGchicken55" or "Chi55cken!" or even just "Chickennnn".
You could keep your password in a hidden document on your computer, on a sticky note, or in a notebook, or anywhere that you keep things for remembering them later.

If you do forget your password, it's not the end of the world. You can re-set your password the same way you just have, or if you're really locked out, you can always email the admins at busboard@buslist.org and we'll help you out. That email address goes to a lot of the admins, and though we don't necessarially check it all the time, if you email us there we *will* get your message.

I know it's frustrating to you, but you can adapt to this change, and I bet that after a while it will feel natural again.

prox.
[tell me to get back to real work!]

[Sioneld]

Thanks guys. Yeah I have two different words plus numbers that I usually use but they're 6 or 9 characters long. I never use capital letters. Even just now it took me three tries to log in before I remembered the capital letter thing. I guess it's mostly frustrating because my old password just stopped working for no apparent reason. I was trying to login from my phone and I've never had problems before but suddenly, the password wouldn't work. I just wondered if you'd done some sort of mass password-reset to force us to create these longer and annoying passwords!

I understand that you want it to be secure, I guess I just don't get why it's a combination that's not widely used. So many passwords to remember already!

Anyway, I think I'll change it again and see if that works for me cause I just had an idea.

[Proximity]

For whatever it's worth, I just came back to BUS after being away for a while, and I had to re-set my password too. It was confusing, and I'm still forgetting my capitals most times I log in
But I get in after a couple tries, and I know that after a bit it'll seem natural again.

prox.
[tell me to get back to real work!]