Password reset

[jack]

AGAIN I went through the steps to recover my username, reset my password, play twenty questions to discover what the actual requirements on my password are, be unable to set it, discover that the problem is "same as previous password", go back to log in screen and log in.

Is there a reason websites that have a morass of password restrictions don't show them on the LOGIN screen, so you can remember what constraints you had to deform your password to meet? Is it sheer hatred for humanity? Or just incompetence? Or better, why not accept that I don't care about your stupid insecure grasping website and give me a one-time log-in code to my actual email address, rather than forcing me to pretend that because I had to use your site once, it will automatically become my primary email address? I guess that last question answers itself.

There's a reason google is seductive and evil, "evil and repellent" is not a good sell!

Comments

[cjwatson]

Not that it'd be bad to show a reminder of password restrictions on the login screen, but a few years ago I switched to using randomly-generated passwords and a password manager program, rather than trying to remember a bunch of slightly-different passwords, so in such cases I just ask my password manager to remember it for me. It is the way forward. :-)

[jack]

Any recommendations? I tried one of the most high-profile ones a little while back because it seemed like a good idea, but I was doing something wrong, it seemed lots of faff and I'm sure it's not supposed to.

Although it's also the case that I should probably admit, I _do_ need to access main email, and a few other social networking sites, from foreign computers occasionally, but for everything else, it's probably ok if I can only log in from my home computer, or if possible, also my work computer and mobile.

[cjwatson]

I tend to just let Firefox remember passwords in cases where it can, which is the minimal-faff option. For anything else, I'm fairly old-school and so pass suits me fine.

I haven't really done much about syncing between multiple computers beyond my usual backups. If I needed that then I might be inclined to rsync ~/.password-store around, or maybe keep multiple stores encrypted with different keys.

[jack]

Oh yes, I usually just let my browser remember passwords, but occasionally it's not been enough, here the problem was because I changed browser a few months ago.