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I am forced to type 2 to 3 passwords every morning. The IT rules says I can't leave my laptop in my table overnight, so I have to every day type at least the disk encryption password + my login password. And sometimes I also have to type the VPN password. That's already 2 to 3 passwords every single time.

Not counting the SSH key passphrases for a lot of stuff...



I've worked for two trading firms. One required six passwords to reach "root" access, when coming in remotely (e.g., from home).

The other used the name of the company as the root password for all hosts, accessible from anywhere within the offices.

Horses for courses, I guess.


Are complicated passwords take you a long time to write? Based on this calculation here's how long we waste on meaningless tasks every year:

     minutes   minutes/month  minutes/year(hours/year)
     1         ~22           ~266(~4.4h)
     2         ~44           ~530(~8.8h)
     3         ~66           ~792(~13h)
*this only takes into account business work days. If you add weekends the number goes up...


This is not only about time wasted. It's about my feelings. It is about the mental effort to memorize them, update them every 90 days (by incrementing the last digit, of course) the frustration of having to type them, and the fact that maybe this is not really the best solution to the problem, yet we're still using it in 2020. I could keep increasing this list forever. Having a strictly technical view over problems always limits what you can see.




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