On Second Thought… Microsoft Says To Write Down Your Passwords

Say That Again

from the tradeoffs dept

For years we’ve all been told never to write down your passwords, for the obvious reason that writing them down makes it easier for someone to come by your desk and find out how to login as you. However, a security program manager at Microsoft is now telling people that writing down passwords is a good thing, as it means people are less likely to simply use the same password for everything. This is true, but it’s really just a question of tradeoffs. Unfortunately, though, those who build systems always assume (falsely) that there are no unintended consequences of forcing people to use “secure” passwords. I recently started using a system that is so complex, that it’ll almost never be used. It needs a “group ID” and a “group password” along with a “user ID” and “user password.” All four need to be entered every time you login. The group ID and group password are assigned — and you can’t change them. They emailed the group ID, but you had to call to get the group password, which is an impossibly complex combination of letters and numbers, where the only possible way to remember it is to write it down. Meanwhile, you could pick your own user password, but the conditions made it difficult to remember. It needed to be over 8 characters, and aside from requiring both a number and a letter, it needed to include “something else” — such as a punctuation mark. While this seems like it might be “good security,” it pretty much guarantees that this particular application is mostly useless — or that anyone who uses it will write everything down together, defeating the purpose of such high levels of security.