Internet users 'need 22 passwords'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20726008

More like 122 here. 99% of them different.

Interesting... when I worked at Aldermaston the Security people were quite happy for those with multiple combination-locked cupboards/filing cabinets to set the same code on all of them.

They did "suggest" that you changed it frequently, of course.

Logging in to the site WAN was a bit different... you had to change your password every month, you then couldn't change it again for a week, and it remembered the last 5 and wouldn't let you repeat any of them.

In reply to a post by billford:

and it remembered the last 5 and wouldn't let you repeat any of them.

Heh! When I worked for the NHS my employee e-mail / profile password had to have at least one number and one letter and be a minimum of six. We were always trying to get it up to twelve, to the horror of non-tech managers and IT support staff.

mine was something like

xxxxxxxxxxxxx30 when I was thirty
xxxxxxxxxxxxx31 when I was thirty one
xxxxxxxxxxxxx32 when I was thirty two

Their system only checked that old and the new were different, and it had to be changed once a year. No big deal. The average NHS employee doesn't actually have anything sensitive or controversial in their personal accounts. Auditor accounts may have had attachments with weaknesses found in systems, but with one or two unusual exceptions, we're talking standard stuff, such as a lack of backup admin user access if the boss gets killed. In reality, IT would sort it in an afternoon.

The only really important password is the one to control access to all the others.

We had to have mixed alpha-numeric, plus at least one "punctuation" character. I think the minimum length was 8, but memory is hazy on that.

Some people shared their passwords, eg managers with their PAs.

I remember one occasion when my bosses PA had to change his password in order to check his mail- she was in a particularly foul temper that morning and changed it to something that would probably incur a ban on this bbs .

The boss, who was a bit strait-laced, refused point-blank to type it in on his machine, and she had to go cap-in-hand to IT support to allow her to change it before the week was up