My uni started forcing discrete passwords on mail services and they also added a variating password for the wifi. This was an attempt to get students in the habit of creating not-so-obvious passwords in their careers. I think it has been quite effective too. Students realize how easy it is to remember something like ut5r#94!, ask anyone on the campus... they know this by heart.
Agreed! My first password provided to me by OIT at Georgia Tech was just like that - long with lots of entropy and not pronounceable. And sure enough a few weeks of using it daily to logon to the campus wifi I knew it by heart. And every 90 days (or maybe it was 180.. been a while) when Georgia Tech would make us change our password, I picked something just as complex. And know thats how all my passwords are.
Unfortunately I now use 1Password to manage a lot of that and I no longer know all of my passwords by heart. :/
I wonder how many of those 123456 might be throw-away accounts of people who just wanted to take a look. Probably not many but I think that aspect is often overlooked.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 26.0 ms ] threadUnfortunately I now use 1Password to manage a lot of that and I no longer know all of my passwords by heart. :/
http://www.imperva.com/news/press/2010/01_21_Imperva_Release...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1067323