Good grief, those statistics are appalling. I sympathize with what a PITA it is to have many passwords, but that's a good reason to use a password manager. I log in once, at the beginning of each computer session, then my password manager automatically fills in my passwords, all of which are quite strong (12 or more characters long, with a mix of lower case and capital letters, numbers, and at least one symbol). The only password I use in more than one place is the one to my RootsWeb mailing lists - I use one for all of them. The only passwords I do not allow my password manager to handle are the ones to my bank and PayPal. Those are committed to memory and not written down, anywhere. Diana > -----Original Message----- > From: listowners-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:listowners- > bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of W David Samuelsen > Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 6:43 PM > To: listowners@rootsweb.com > Subject: [LO] Secure Passwords > > http://csis.org/blog/large-e-mail-phishing-scheme-continues-unfold > - > this was dated June 25, 2012. > > "A researcher who examined the list of stolen accounts found that > the > most commonly used password was "123456." Further, 42% used > lowercase > letters a-z and only 6% mixed alpha-numeric characters with other > characters. 20% of the passwords were only 6 letters long. A > recent > report by the security firm Sophos found that 40% of people used the > same password for every website. While phishing schemes prey on all > users, these statistics strongly demonstrate that internet-users > need to > be smarter and more aware in choosing passwords that are more > difficult > to crack (using capitalized letters, symbols, and numbers together), > and > to vary the passwords they use on the internet." > > W. David Samuelsen > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LISTOWNERS- > request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message