Knitters PSA & Tom Bihn Forum Members

[AlaskaGirl]

Greetings,
If you have an account at Ravelry, it is strongly advised that you change your password. With the new policy, there has been a large number of accounts being hacked.

If you use the same password at any other site, those accounts may be vulnerable too. It is suggested that a unique password is used for each account.

Tom Bihn forum members who also use Ravelry may want to consider changing their Tom Bihn Forum password, too. Some Ravelry users have been targeted off-site of Ravelry.

Suggestions for a good password keeper app and ideas to create multiple unique but memorable passwords are appreciated. Thank you! elisa

[bchaplin]

Thanks for the heads-up! I use MSecure, which works on both iOS and Android. I've had it for a few years and it's performed well. I haven't upgraded to their latest version though, so I can't comment on it; I'm one generation behind.

[Cristina]

Thanks Elisa. This is especially important for people who created a Rav account ages ago and don't use it (and, crucially, didn't change their passwords after the security breach several years ago). Hackers have, in the past 3 days or so, been using dormant accounts to spam and target active users.


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[aedifica]

Thanks! I'm fond of LastPass, I like their web browser integration (so it fills in passwords for me when I log in to websites) and also the ability to have it on my phone. It makes it very easy to have unique passwords, since they don't have to be memorable!

For passwords that you do need to be able to remember, I'm fond of using poems: think of a poem you know, then use the first letter of each word in the first line. For example, if your chosen poem is Robert Frost's "Walking In The Woods On A Snowy Evening" then your first line is "Whose woods these are I think I know" and the password is "WwtaItIk". Add numbers and symbols to make it more complex: for example, "WwtaItIk!" if you're excited that you think you know whose woods these are, or "3WwtaItIk!" if you're giving yourself three guesses whose woods these are.

You can make the password longer by including the next line of the poem or adding the first line of another poem: "Whose woods these are I think I know, Let us go then, you and I".

[moriond]

Greetings,
If you have an account at Ravelry, it is strongly advised that you change your password. With the new policy, there has been a large number of accounts being hacked.

Wow! I’m guessing that “the new policy” you refer to is banning the explicit support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry — which site, to my mind, should not be politicized. In any case, I’ve changed my password (and I now know that @aedifica likes Prufrock — I guess starting letters from the Dante quote in Italian don’t make as good a mnemonic)

moriond

ETA: I use 1Password, but it has more of a separate ecosystem than Lastpass

[carrot]

Thanks! I'm fond of LastPass, I like their web browser integration (so it fills in passwords for me when I log in to websites) and also the ability to have it on my phone. It makes it very easy to have unique passwords, since they don't have to be memorable!

For passwords that you do need to be able to remember, I'm fond of using poems: think of a poem you know, then use the first letter of each word in the first line. For example, if your chosen poem is Robert Frost's "Walking In The Woods On A Snowy Evening" then your first line is "Whose woods these are I think I know" and the password is "WwtaItIk". Add numbers and symbols to make it more complex: for example, "WwtaItIk!" if you're excited that you think you know whose woods these are, or "3WwtaItIk!" if you're giving yourself three guesses whose woods these are.

You can make the password longer by including the next line of the poem or adding the first line of another poem: "Whose woods these are I think I know, Let us go then, you and I".

Now that most places allow longer passwords, I don't mind using entire phrases as my password. For instance, my WiFi passwords for a long time were lines out of song lyrics.

[aedifica]

and I now know that @aedifica likes Prufrock

I do like Prufock well enough and T.S. Eliot in general, but actually I was trying to come up with a first line that would fit together with the line from my first example! I ended up having to cheat by looking up "famous poem first lines" because on my own I was only coming up with ones like "I have eaten the plums" and "I saw the best minds of my generation" which don't fit so well with walking in the woods. But "here are these woods, I think I know who owns them, let us go then [and have a walk in the woods]" would work to help one remember a password.

P.S. Having typed "I saw the best minds of my generation," now I have They Might Be Giants' "I Should Be Allowed To Think" playing in my head--it starts with the same line.

[Cristina]

Now that most places allow longer passwords, I don't mind using entire phrases as my password. For instance, my WiFi passwords for a long time were lines out of song lyrics.

Radio jingles are useful for this purpose as well!

[MatthewR]

As it's been said, AlaskaGirl is right -- it's always good to keep your passwords strong and unique. Password managers are indeed great for that, as well. Here's a little guide from the EFF. Since most passwords nowadays allow long characters and some extent of special characters, I like to use words that have no inherent connection that can't be parsed as a sentence (e.g. correct horse battery staple) and as with everything (and especially CompSci/Security related things) there's an xkcd for that.

Also, it's a great conicidence that you mention Howl, aedifica, as it was also quoted in the 1995 movie Hackers ("angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" ). Yes, I knew that off hand and yes it's my favorite movie despite having almost nothing to do with actual hacking.

[moriond]

As it's been said, AlaskaGirl is right -- it's always good to keep your passwords strong and unique. Password managers are indeed great for that, as well. Here's a little guide from the EFF. Since most passwords nowadays allow long characters and some extent of special characters, I like to use words that have no inherent connection that can't be parsed as a sentence (e.g. correct horse battery staple) and as with everything (and especially CompSci/Security related things) there's an xkcd for that.

Also, it's a great conicidence that you mention Howl, aedifica, as it was also quoted in the 1995 movie Hackers ("angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" ). Yes, I knew that off hand and yes it's my favorite movie despite having almost nothing to do with actual hacking.

I use the "diceware" method to generate pass phrases (that's the second heading "Creating Strong Passwords Using Dice" in your EFF guide), based on random combinations (in some of the background guides and tips from 1Password). Even when long passwords are accepted in many sites, I still need a Password manager to keep track of the rules. For example, I often stick in special characters -- but some web sites don't let you do that. Even government sites might state that the first character has to be (or cannot be) a certain class (alpha, number, etc.). And I have to keep track of the case/format used for questions. By the way, even with long passwords used for a wireless router, I usually use some variation even on a real phrase so that there are random capitalized letters, no space between some words, or a different punctuation mark substituted in the middle. (It does mean that I sometimes have to type a long password in more than once to get it correctly entered).

[jmachats]

Wow! I’m guessing that “the new policy” you refer to is banning the explicit support of Donald Trump and his administration on Ravelry — which site, to my mind, should not be politicized. In any case, I’ve changed my password (and I now know that @aedifica likes Prufrock — I guess starting letters from the Dante quote in Italian don’t make as good a mnemonic)

moriond

ETA: I use 1Password, but it has more of a separate ecosystem than Lastpass

Donald Trump is a white nationalist - I don't see how that is a "political" system, framework, or theory of governance that can be "politicized"

What it is is exclusionary, hostile and violent. And I think that's what Ravelry was, rightly, banning