How to remember passwords (and which ones you should)
At the risk of repeating myself (see “What you don’t know about passwords might hurt you”), the best way to ensure that you never forget your passwords is to offload the task of remembering to a password manager such as 1Password (; $40). For most passwords, most people, and most of the time, that’s the only trick you’ll need. However, no matter what tools you use, you’ll have to memorize at least a few passwords. Because those are among your most important, you don’t want to trade security for memorability. Here are a few tips that can help you make sure your brain doesn’t betray you.
Determine which passwords you must memorize
I have no idea what 99 percent of my passwords are. Honestly, none whatsoever. They’re long strings of random computer-generated characters, and I’ve never even glanced at most of them. When I need to use them, I let my password manager fill them in for me or, if that won’t work for some reason, I copy and paste them. After all, it’s no harder for an app to enter a 14-character random password than for me to type in the word baseball, so I figure I have nothing to lose by going the crazy-secure route.
However, one password I’ve memorized cold is the password that unlocks all the other passwords stored in my password manager. That’s a pretty important one. I’ve also memorized my OS X user account password, because I enter it many times a day—and since I use OS X’s FileVault, I need that password to start up my Mac before I have access to any automated tools. Since I’m frequently prompted to enter the passwords for my iCloud, Gmail, and Dropbox accounts (often in situations where it would be awkward to copy and paste), I’ve memorized those too.
Depending on your habits and needs, your list might be different from mine, but most people can get by with no more than half a dozen passwords committed to memory. Considering that you may have many hundreds of passwords overall, memorizing five or six is a pretty minor task.
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http://www.macworld.com/article/2014040/how-to-remember-passwords-and-which-ones-you-should.html
