Passwords

WARNING: If you are not good at mathematics, proceed at your own risk.


How many passwords do I have to manage? One for gmail. One for yahoo mail. One for rediffmail. One for hotmail. One for my internet connection. Two for every bank account (I have three accounts). One for skype. One for unix. One for office windows. One for home windows. One for the laptop. One for my cell phone. One for the sim card. One for the demat account. One for every debit/credit card of mine (I have four in all).And many more.. which I cant recollect now.

If remembering them is not enough, some of them expire. So I have to change some of them periodically. Every month for the demat account. Every month for the bank accounts. Every month for office windows. Every two months for unix.
And if changing them is not enough, there are a few which do not accept the passwords which have been used for the last three times.

So my passwords fall into two groups:

1. The ones I am forced to change periodically (banks, demat, office windows, unix, )
2. The ones I don’t change. (all mails, phone, sim card, internet, home windows, laptop, skype, credit/debit cards)

As of now I have to remember 23 passwords. (4 for the cards, 4 for the mails, 6 for the bank account and 1 each for the remaining lot.)


The Ones I am forced to change periodically further all into two sub groups.

2a. The ones which allow the last “n” previously used passwords. (office windows, unix
2b. The ones which do allow the last “n” previously used passwords. (bank accounts, demat accounts)

Instead of using random passwords, I have a group of 2 passwords (which I alternate) for the items falling under point 1 above. So I have a total of 4 passwords for these.

For point 2, I am less fortunate and I have a group of 4 passwords to remember (which I use cyclically). This is because the last three used passwords are not allowed to be reused. So I end up having 28 passwords for these (4(four passwords for the demat account) + 4*3*2 (four passwords for the three bank accounts which have two passwords each)). The figure comes out to 28.

Summing everything up I have 44 passwords (23+28-7). For those who know mathematics, i have the equations in place. Others were already warned.

If this was not enough, I have a list of secret questions, in case if I happen to forget any of the passwords. Since the usage of the secret questions is rare, I prefer keeping questions which will have constant answers throughout my life. Something like “What is your name?” rather than “What is your girl friend’s name?” or “What is you favorite drink?” This is because I don’t want to risk locking my account by retrying “Deepa” as the current secret answer (While the actual answer was someone else from the past).

So all in all I have to manage 44 passwords and god knows how many secret questions.

And they say using Internet is easy.