How do they forget passwords???

Since there seems to be quite a lot of rant style posts up here today, I may as well add my own.

Everyday I hear the same thing - "I must have locked my account or something."
Fine, I'll just reset it but quite often I run across someone who isn't locked out or the pasword doesn't need to be changed. I let them know thins and ask them to retype the username and password and often times I get:

OK, WHAT"S MY PASSWORD?"

Now here's the kicker. They actually don't know. They use the same thing every single day for 3 months at a pop and they forget it. I mean, how do you do that? It's probably the word winter or summer anyway, goodness knows that's half the company!

One person was agitated when she called one day and was angry that she had 2 passwords to remember and could she remember them both? I honestly didn't understand. I have like 7 passwords here and I don't have a problem with them. I could see it if they used it once every month or two, but this is every single day to get into the network. How do they forget that?

It's far better that they forget than (this is true) write them on a sticker and stick it on their monitor. Doh!

[quote]Originally posted by Tubs:
<strong>It's far better that they forget than (this is true) write them on a sticker and stick it on their monitor. Doh!</strong><hr></blockquote>

How true - I have a user that has 5 or 6 stickies all around his monitor and they're all labeled something like "Website X" and then his password for the site. "Program X" and then his pass for that program. What's the freakin point of a password anyway?

The really sad part is that his password is the same for almost everything. It's a series of two numbers (eg - 4545), and if the password needs at least 6 chars, he just repeats (eg - 454545).

Sad.

I agree, some users have to remember 1 maybe 2 or 3 passwords, now is that SO hard ??

I need to remember -

8 server (admin) passwords (Which change every quarter or after a security breach)
3 of my own account passwords for server login's (Change once a year)
3 seperate personal email accounts
3 passwords for my home PC's
2 combinations for security doors at work (Changed every month)
umpteen work & personal telephone numbers (including mobiles)
2 Credit card PIN's......

Yet, the average [L]user cannot remember ONE, just 1 login password...Which they created and is more than likely the name of their dog.

God knows what will happen when we upgrade to Windows 2000 in the new year. The minimum password length is set to 8 characters, no names/places/countries allowed, a minimum of 3 capital letters and 2 numbers have to be included!

[quote]Originally posted by Geek #1:
<strong>

God knows what will happen when we upgrade to Windows 2000 in the new year. The minimum password length is set to 8 characters, no names/places/countries allowed, a minimum of 3 capital letters and 2 numbers have to be included!</strong><hr></blockquote>

Holy Jeebuzz Cykes dude!
My users would die or a brain overload if I made there PW's that hard!
My guys need to remember 3 passwords, the NT4 one, the Lotus Notes one and the JDE as/400 login.

Me... I have to remember about 100-150 passwords.
I change the system password twice a year, or when we get suspicous activity, they total about 15 or so, all the others are the users passwords.
I have to rem them because the moment they have an issue with the're desktop, they take off and have a coffe or a smoke in some other dimension, so unless I want to waste 30 mins a person looking for them, or wait around for an hour or so, I have to remember their passwords.
Sometimes when I go home I have to wonder why my brain hurts so much.
<insert the Monty Python wav files here> "My Brain Hurts.."<Insert Gumby over voice> :( :/

Well...
Forgetting passwords are one thing.
-BUT-
Forgetting Useranmes are far weird...

I have some users who occasioally say "WHAT? do i need to remember my login?"

[quote]Originally posted by Milenko:
<strong>What's the freakin point of a password anyway?
</strong><hr></blockquote>

That is probably the same question the users are asking. They stick the password to their monitor because they do not see any point to keeping it secret. I find the reason why the users don't know the point of having a password is that they are largely uniformed of the need for proper security. Several years ago I began a practice of working with corporate training to educate the employees of the need for proper security and password policies. This helped reduce employee frustration with passwords and increase awareness of security. Now I am getting fewer forgotten passwords and more emails from people warning me about security alerts on the internet (even though I usually find out first).

I always use the same User name but my passwords vary. From Synonyms to licence numbers from photos of Ferraris.

Well it sounds like people do not like to think for themselves
That is why voter turn outs are down , Who wants to think when some one else will think for them , Are we becoming a society of lemings , God forbid , I get people who can't read the " Lot full " sign and they ask if the lot is full
:eek: :eek:

"So why do we need a password anyway?"

As "KINGofBLEH" stated the reason being security. A password allows access only to the people who should have access. File space on a server for example, without passwords anyone could look at anyone's files.

The other main reason being to stop crackers from breaking in. Even a low level user account gives you have access to the server and the network itself - thats half the job already done.

I can't remember how many times I have heard the question "what's my password?" but I wish I had £1 for each one!

[quote]Originally posted by Gabriel:
<strong>Well...
Forgetting passwords are one thing.
-BUT-
Forgetting Useranmes are far weird...

I have some users who occasioally say "WHAT? do i need to remember my login?"</strong><hr></blockquote>

Hit the nail on the head here. I mean - the logon is yer freakin' name for almost every company there is but they still forget it. They literally forget their own names! I mean, how the hweck do you forget your own name? I had one lady tell me the # after her name made it too difficult to remember. Heck is that?

Makes me wish that computers came with devices that would sterilize the person I was speaking to so they couldn't breed or something. Maybe just a shock button on my end wired to an electrode in their chairs. I'd spend all day zappnig people for being stupid.

[Shifts uncomfortably]

I'm on my 5th messanger account because I keep forgetting my username and password (never seem to be able to remember website ones).

Re the 4545 one, ever thought about borrowing this guy's cashcard? I think I know what the PIN is :)

On the positive side, I can remember the other 50 or so passwords and security codes that I need to (though it sometimes takes a while, or a trip to the safe).

It just seems like my brain is full and any new stuff I learn just pushes out some old stuff.

What day is it?

We're starting to think about thumbprint security at my work. Unfortunately, it's going to be a sh*tty job for me but all of IT hates it when they hear, "What's my password" Have you all seen the new Abit lappies with thumbprint scanners? We might be adding those type of scanners within the next year. That'll be nice. :)

[quote]Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
<strong>

Hit the nail on the head here. I mean - the logon is yer freakin' name for almost every company there is but they still forget it. They literally forget their own names! I mean, how the hweck do you forget your own name? I had one lady tell me the # after her name made it too difficult to remember. Heck is that?

Makes me wish that computers came with devices that would sterilize the person I was speaking to so they couldn't breed or something. Maybe just a shock button on my end wired to an electrode in their chairs. I'd spend all day zappnig people for being stupid.</strong><hr></blockquote>

BINGO! I was looking for someone to say that! Just had that the other day...
"enter you username and password to logon"
"What's my user name?"
"How long have you been with the company?"
"3 years"
**SMACK!**
"But I know the password"
**SMACK!** **SMACK!**

[quote]Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
<strong>. . .
Everyday I hear the same thing - "I must have locked my account or something."
. . .and often times I get:

OK, WHAT"S MY PASSWORD?". . .

Now here's the kicker. They actually don't know. . . . .</strong><hr></blockquote>

Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away . >. . a day would not go by without me hearing the same: “What is my Password?”.

Now I only hear it once or twice a month – mainly from new employees.

Why do you ask? I gave everyone a lesson on remembering passwords and now everyone uses a short sentence complete with capitalization and punctuation for their password or more precisely their password sentence.

So far it has worked like a charm.
:cool:

Why do people say 'My password's not working'? The password's working fine, it's your brain that's gone for a burton.

Oh yeah. I get that many, many times a week. I work in a corporate tech support department and sometimes the same person calls several times in a week saying they got locked out of their account because they forgot their password. Sometimes I see them putting in their password as the username and the username as the password. It's pretty pathetic some of these users. Luckily, they make up a very small percentage of the company.

I know how (l)users forget their passwords. They check save password and never have to type it in again. If something happens where they need it then they dont remember. I work for an ISP and I see this alot.

I have to remember alot of passwords too. The best system I found is to use the first letter of each word in a long sentence. Hard to crack and easy to remember.

[quote]Originally posted by ClickHere2Surf.com:
<strong>The other day I was trying to login to my website and it kept sayong my password was wrong. I must have typed it 30 times as slowly as I could to make sure I didn't make any mistakes! I thought I was going crazy! I was SO SURE I was typing in the right password so I think (^%$# someone hacked my site and changed the password!). I then decide to copy and paste the password from somewhere and it worked! So I thought it's something to do with the keyboard!

So course you're all thinking I left caps-lock on (that's the first thing I checked)! Guess what it was?

I was eating pistachios the night before and a small part of a shell fell into my keyboard and was blobking my "H" key so it didn't get pressed!

I noticed this my typing the password in a place where it doesn't replace all the characters with a "*" and noticed the "H" never appeared!</strong><hr></blockquote>


LOL -
From another topic
<a href="http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum3/noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=16&t=001237" target="_blank">elsewhere </a> in this forum

heh, whenever i get users like this (and i get ALOT, and due to PR reasons can't be more blunt about things...) i just change their password to "iforgot" usually after this they don't call back asking for passwords again....

[quote]Originally posted by Tweak:
<strong>heh, whenever i get users like this (and i get ALOT, and due to PR reasons can't be more blunt about things...) i just change their password to "iforgot" usually after this they don't call back asking for passwords again....</strong><hr></blockquote>

Our head Scary Devil does this. If he has to deal with a forgotten PW (it's rare 'cos he has us Monkeys to do it for him), he resets the password to "fool", "idiot" "forgetful" or "dontdoitagain".
In annoying (i.e. recurring) cases, he uses "stopforgettingmeyouba$t4rd" :D .

CD :rolleyes: +

The old password problem. I usually get a few a week. The sad part is that we don't have tight security here and the passwords don't change often on the LAN. I know almost all the passwords, I just tell them right on the phone when they ask("my password is broken", or "What is my password, you changed it, right"

[quote]Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
<strong>

Hit the nail on the head here. I mean - the logon is yer freakin' name for almost every company there is but they still forget it. They literally forget their own names! I mean, how the hweck do you forget your own name? I had one lady tell me the # after her name made it too difficult to remember. Heck is that?

Makes me wish that computers came with devices that would sterilize the person I was speaking to so they couldn't breed or something. Maybe just a shock button on my end wired to an electrode in their chairs. I'd spend all day zappnig people for being stupid.</strong><hr></blockquote>


Ever tell someone over the phone to log in and they ask what their username is, when you say (as it is here) it is your first initial and last name, they ask how to spell that? How to spell their own name after forgetting, I have, and I agree, humanitarian laws should not be in effect for these people, bring on the stun guns!

[quote]Originally posted by jeffbrown:
<strong>


Ever tell someone over the phone to log in and they ask what their username is, when you say (as it is here) it is your first initial and last name, they ask how to spell that? How to spell their own name after forgetting, I have, and I agree, humanitarian laws should not be in effect for these people, bring on the stun guns!</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm tellin' ya man - eugenics. Stupid people just shouldn't breed.

:D :D

[quote]Originally posted by ilovetheusers:
<strong>Since there seems to be quite a lot of rant style posts up here today, I may as well add my own.

Everyday I hear the same thing - "I must have locked my account or something."
Fine, I'll just reset it but quite often I run across someone who isn't locked out or the pasword doesn't need to be changed. I let them know thins and ask them to retype the username and password and often times I get:

OK, WHAT"S MY PASSWORD?"

Now here's the kicker. They actually don't know. They use the same thing every single day for 3 months at a pop and they forget it. I mean, how do you do that? It's probably the word winter or summer anyway, goodness knows that's half the company!

One person was agitated when she called one day and was angry that she had 2 passwords to remember and could she remember them both? I honestly didn't understand. I have like 7 passwords here and I don't have a problem with them. I could see it if they used it once every month or two, but this is every single day to get into the network. How do they forget that?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I get this alot and I also get WHATS MY USERNAME

Or WHAT IS A USERNAME?


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :confused: :confused: :eek:

The funniest password episode I ever had was with a member of the marketing department.

I was called to see him, and when I arrived I saw a red faced man bashing his keyboard.

I politely asked what the problem was, to which he replied that his %^&* doesnt work anymore.

Ah I said, and how do you remember your password?

Easy he said, its always my girlfriends' name!

I checked his password and said, OK your girlfriend is Mary right?

Oh "£$%% I forgot, I changed girlfriends and didn't change my password!

It took a while before I could stop laughing, I can tell you!

[quote]Originally posted by NooNoo:
<strong>The funniest password episode I ever had was with a member of the marketing department.

I was called to see him, and when I arrived I saw a red faced man bashing his keyboard.

I politely asked what the problem was, to which he replied that his %^&* doesnt work anymore.

Ah I said, and how do you remember your password?

Easy he said, its always my girlfriends' name!

I checked his password and said, OK your girlfriend is Mary right?

Oh "£$%% I forgot, I changed girlfriends and didn't change my password!

It took a while before I could stop laughing, I can tell you!</strong><hr></blockquote>

all I can say is, WOW. (sense the sarcasim)

They usually put on their birthday, their vehicle license number or something.
The problem is, when they forget it too!!!

[quote]Originally posted by Gabriel:
<strong>Well...
Forgetting passwords are one thing.
-BUT-
Forgetting Useranmes are far weird...

I have some users who occasioally say "WHAT? do i need to remember my login?"</strong><hr></blockquote>

I agree there. Had one user that couldn't remember his first name and last initial. He could remember the password but for the life of him couldn't get the login straight. For three days he complained that his new login didn't work. I would check it and tell him it was okay. Then I caught on and had him try to login. Poor sap. He was trying to use the previous person's name and his password.