Sing it back, sing it back, sing it back to me…
March 30th, 2011
From One Thing Well, a clever way to come up with a secure but memorable password:
Talking of password generation, if you need to come up with a secure password without the help of software, you should make it one you can sing!
[...]
As an example, my favourite Prince & The Revolution B-side is She's Always In My Hair, and the second verse has been stuck in my head for a decade or two:
Whenever I feel like not 2 great at all
Whenever I'm all alone
And even if I hit the wrong notes
She's always in my boat
She's always thereTake the initial letters, and you get:
wifln2gaawiaaaeiihtwnsaimbsat
Nice. My only problems with this technique are that
- I have a lousy memory for lyrics.1
- Given the number of passwords I have to remember these days, I have a horrible feeling that I'd end up forgetting not just the password, but which song was associated with which account/password.
- The consequences of which could be ameliorated by my making sure that whichever track I chose is on my iPod and has lyrics. I'm fairly confident that once I saw the lyrics I'd quickly remember which verse I'd used to generate the password. ↩
March 31st, 2011 at 00:51
I am a complete nerd. I already do this, except I do it with poetry. In German. :)