mfh's Journal: How to Sign in to As Many Sites As you Want

I wanted to share a method I use for keeping all my passwords forgotten without wasting too much time.

I am very picky about what I register to:

1. I will register to a blog I visit frequently.
2. I will never register to sites that have IN YOUR FACE advertising.
3. I never register for sites that break their site if you don't register, because that's evil.
4. I don't register to sites that don't let you post anonymously because I like to get to know people before I register.
5. I rarely register to forums of any kind because they are usually pretty terse.

There are things to remember when you are registering to a site: Most sites will have a forgot password link that you can use to retrieve your password. This is a good thing. Most people are using a browser that can remember your password. Most people use one or two machines or they would not use a public computer for anything important because of a fear of keyloggers. There are many free keylogger blockers, but do they work? Who knows.

What I do when I register to a new site:

1. Open a text document.
2. Type in something really random and take the middle 8 or 10 characters and hit copy.
3. The characters copied will become my new random password.
4. Then I simply paste it in and fill in the registration form and paste in my password.
5. When I get the validation email, I simply copy/paste the link and paste it into a new tab in firefox.
6. If I am logging in on another system or my system is purged/formatted (which I do from time to time), I click the remember password button in Firefox and just copy/paste the pass again.
7. I always use the same username or a variation of it.
8. If I don't remember my own password in my head, I keep all my passwords different.
9. Easy enough.