I managed to lock myself out of my password manager. This is not a happy accident.
I do have a record of the password that gets me the other passwords.
Unfortunately my handwriting is not always legible when it is a note scrawled amid a page full of other notes. There were at least 8 ways to read this fairly intricate item, and since you’ll get locked out for multiple mis-entries, it can take some doing to work your way in. Took me two hours to get in.
They don’t want us to use an ‘easy’ password. Well, it isn’t.
My LastPass password is in my Outlook Notes, it’s also saved in my Gmail “Personal” folder as a “just in case you forgot” email.
and the darned thing is again not working. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, same entry.
When you get it up and running, print it out, cut it out of the page, and put it in the freezer…..or on the back of one of the kitchen cabinet doors, or inside a drawer. No identifying information, just the password.
Has Jane got her own Keepass or Lastpass or whatever? In that case you might be able to read in each other’s database of keys, as a form of backup with a different password.
I know I can put my Keepass .kdb file on an USB stick (key? drive?) to transport it between two computers, then read it into my (identical) Keepass program on the other computer. I need to put in my original password to unlock the moved file for importing, so if that sometimes doesn’t take, that might be a problem. Maybe change the password the next time you do get in, before trying this.
Then you can choose to either duplicate entries or keep only the most recent one (if you don’t have entries with the same names).
In my opinion passwords are like airport security — more of a nuisance and hassle to those who need the protection they allegedly provide than they are a deterrent to those they’re supposed to protect you from.
Wol, an absolutely wonderful package arrived. Warm, toasty warm on a rainy evening. Thank you!
You’re more than welcome. Hugs for all those books that have brought me such pleasure and for that wife of yours who takes such good care of you.
I use a long pass phrase, rather than complex password, for Keepass.
For example, using “My#1FavoriteAuthorIsCJCherryh” is the sort of thing that you can easily remember (and type correctly), but is sufficiently complex to ensure security.
Then let Keepass generate the weird, random passwords that actually get used to access various sites.
I got the blighter, after the second lockout, AND got the new icon for Firefox. AND changed my password. I am IN!
Problem wasn’t bad handwriting, but a tendency to typo a certain combo of letters. Once I created the same typo twice—I got in. Feature that ALONG with the automatic lockout on too many tries, and you can see why I was pulling my hair out.
Funny, I have that same problem, typically transposing two consonants on either side of a vowel! Isn’t that wierd?
Here’s an idea for passwords: home addresses! They’re long-ish, comprize numbers and letters, conventionally both upper and lower case, and even non-alphanumeric characters, and easily remembered or reminded with just a word. They don’t even have to be ours, but someone else we know. They’re not totally random, true, but they don’t need a password manager (I’m sitting here with 3 boxes in reach, four more across the room, and another dozen in the “office” rack, each with more than one, up to 5-6 bootable systems. Have I mentioned I hand-built my first PERSONAL computer in ’76?). For me, managing all the password managers I’d need would be worse than managing the passwords! And of course I use Linux (see avatar), generally more secure, so there’s less focus on such apps as KeepPass, or whatever.
Hah, I managed to type a different key than I intended to when creating a password recently, and have not yet changed it. Annoying. — And a PIN for one card had to be redone, so that I still remember it as the first one, and have trouble remembering, the rare times I use it, which is the correct one. Sigh. — Then a couple of services wanted new, more complex passwords, and…grrr. — Now that I think about it, I need to make sure I recall the ones I don’t regularly use, and reset them if need be. Sigh. — I come from back when you could not, should not, would not use special symbols or spaces in passwords, and they had to start with a letter, as if they were variable names. I’m still not used to putting special symbols in passwords, but two sites at least now have demanded it.
I like Jonathan’s suggestion of a meaningful but unlikely phrase, so it’s memorable to you.
—–
Yesterday and today, I’ve had a different sort of dilemma: Yesterday afternoon, for no apparent reason I can tell, my computer and router decided that some websites but not others would refuse to connect and would make the browser complain that I should check my network settings, because it thought maybe I wasn’t connected to the internet. Well, except that other sites connected just fine, or a bit slower. Hmm. For a while there, it looked like only YouTube and Wikipedia and Google and a few others were accessible, while Amazon and any WordPress sites and a few others were not.
This resulted in some head-scratching, closing the browser, shutting down the computer, and so on, which didn’t change things. (In the process, I find my browser has gotten more hard to understand about where and how one finds how to clear the cache, history, and so on. That should be an easy to find thing, dang it. Why make it hard to find? What is with software developers lately? So many products are getting byzantine about their settings and usage.
I finally decided I’d need to unplug my router to reset it. Or else I was going to have a call for tech support with a problem that had a very ill-defined description.
The tech really tightened the screws on the cables leading from the wall to the router, both ends. Dang. — And one of the boxes, the router itself, does not appear to have a reset button or a power cord. Wow, is that inconvenient. The other box, however, has a power cable besides the data cable. Aha! — That, and the computer toolkit that was supposed to be in my box of must-have stuff brought here when I moved? No dang toolkit. Therefore no tool to unscrew a coax or other data cable from the wall or the router or the other box from the cable / broadband company. Aarrgh! (Gotta order a toolkit now.) — So, unplug what I could.
Eureka! That fixed the problem. — I still have no idea what got my router, computer, and browser in such a snit that they would refuse one set of websites but allow another set just fine. (Also, the App Store and iTunes Store and hmm, the Kindle App’s network access were not available.)
So I don’t know what the problem was, but now it’s resolved. — I hope.
Note, I will also be confirming tomorrow whether there’s been a problem I don’t know about with my cable / broadband provider’s billing. This doesn’t appear to be a problem, but I want to make sure nothing has gone out of whack without notifying me, because that’s happened with another service in the past year.
Y’know, all this high-tech stuff is wonderful when it works right, and nothing more than a big brick of a doorstop, or worse, sheer smoke and fog, when it does not work. But when it doesn’t work right, it has this bad habit of throwing other stuff out of whack in a sort of branching waterfall effect.
On the up side, there’s a new episode of The Orville to download from iTunes, and the kettle I’d ordered from Amazon arrived, to use over the weekend. The stovetop burner covers./ pans also arrived. They’re standard sizes…but the tolerance is just slightly off from my actual stovetop’s cutouts. I’m going to double-check my stove manufacturer and see if I have the papers for the stove model still, and if so, maybe I can find an exact fit. If not, the one I got is passable, though not ideal.
So, some good along with the inexplicable.
And hoping for a grocery store trip next week, possibly with a new cabbie, to see if he works out. However, more likely, I’m still stuck with semi-reliable friends for this. So…well, one way or the other, I’m getting to the grocery store next week. Got to.
It has been a very odd week. I’m glad to see the weekend!
Jonathan agrees with xkcd. Here’s a link to xkcd’s take on passwords. https://www.xkcd.com/936/
I have 2 computers that I use for entirely different activities so on each laptop I have a password protected Excel spreadsheet with username, password, URL, and answers to security questions. Since the system seems reasonably well organized I haven’t changed to a pass phrase yet, but maybe someday.
@CJ I have the solution to your dilema. 😉
“Computer scientists have created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store data — from security codes to identification tags — without needing any on-board electronics or sensors.
A new type of smart fabric developed at the University of Washington could pave the way for jackets that store invisible passcodes and open the door to your apartment or office.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171031135704.htm
I synch my passwords across my iMac, iPad, and phone. And use a spiral bound notebook for accounts/passwords and associated stuff. Can’t hack a notebook.
This is indeed true. Some of mine are only written down in case I’m incapacitated – those are the ones I use often enough that I have them memorized at muscle-memory level.
I use index cards as an extra backup for my most important passwords, one per card.