I won't even get into how insecure that type of user name system is. All some needs to do is get a company directory and they have everyone's username.

Is it really practical to exercise security measures when it comes to usernames? I've never worked on a system where they weren't predictable. After all, you often have to look at a user ID and work out whose it is.

My magic secure password trick is to pick a word I'll remember and stick punctuation in the middle of it "carabiner" becomes "cara%biner" and if they need numbers it can be "cara1%biner" and we're good to go. If I have to change them regularly, just increment the number.

I know a lot of people here have a baseword and then a string of numbers.

yeah, I did that for a while. I would put a number before or after, which fooled the computer into thinking that it was a new password. You couldn't just use buffy1, then buffy2; it didn't like that. You'd have to use buffy1, then 2buffy, then buffy3. then it got better at recognizing that issue. now, I just get random. I also sometimes just use the same password in different languages. Yay babel fish.

I did have a spikelust moment once when I realized that I was going to have to give my password to someone and at the time it was something like mcshep4evah!

ita is my password twin! I pick a word and stick !5 in the middle. Like my niece's name "First!5Middle" or any other word. So all I have to do is remember the word.

I have a "universal" work password, plus 4 other passwords, 2 of which change not in sync with one another. Plus my personal stuff, of course. It is to argh.

Also, drilling cement and pounding on metal pipes directly under my chair. And just got spam with the subject line "Banana God Room." Hmmm

Is it really practical to exercise security measures when it comes to usernames? I've never worked on a system where they weren't predictable. After all, you often have to look at a user ID and work out whose it is.

It's more the issue of having it that uniform. Even having the options of firstinitial.lastname, lastname.firstinitial, lastnamefirstname, firstnamelastname, etc. all available increase the number of options that an attack has to work through since the username is not a given. Basically an attack now has to try all password options against multiple username options as opposed to just iterating through possible passwords.

I've never worked on a system where they weren't predictable.

In our district, depending on when you were hired, your user id might be totally transparent (first name.last name) or it might be opaque (initials followed by the last four digits of your employee number, which is a number given to you that the correlates to nothing else in your life). It was done like that not for security (I'm quite sure) but for convenience.

Hells, yeah. I watched Spaceballs, Cannonball Run, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure while making Christmas cookies this year. I'm surprised the cookies didn't turn into dumb-yet-funny pills.

I got the Bill & Ted's soundtrack for Xmas this year.

Aimee thinks I'm an idiot, but I have fond memories.

I have been at new job for less than a month and I have main login and 5 others for various programs - none are the same and the main changes every 4 weeks, but I think the others stay the same forever.

I am forgetting ones already since I do not use some programs but maybe once/mo.

Today is just ankle biting me to death. the store I wanted to go to at lunch closed last week according to the signs on the windows, then I spilled the fries I bought in an attempt to better my mood. I fully expect to trip and fall before the day is over.

password at work is pretty generic with incremental number increase at the end . I'm not sure my library password needs to change that often. - really I don't do super secret things , but whatever.

They have been repairing streets and sidewalks in my neighborhood. Which often means my street is blocked. Even though I didn't have to go anywhere yesterday, it was making me anxious. Partly because it looks like they are going to have to tear up the street right in front of my drive way. Right now, there is a truck parked across my driveway - happily I parked on the cross street so that I wouldn't have to worry about getting out for work . but it still bugs. if only I had some idea what would happen when - but everything depends on the rain