this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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xkcd

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Why couldn't the amulet have been hidden by Aunt Alice, who understands modern key exchange algorithms?

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[–] YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Are you really supposed to change your passwords every 30 days?

[–] Poik@pawb.social 6 points 9 months ago

No. Make sure your password is memorable to you, and long without being easily guessed. The more secure the initial password, the longer you can go without switching. The more memorable the initial password, the longer you can go without using password recovery.

If your passwords are safety critical, they should not be written anywhere, making remembering them key.

This assumes you're not using two factor authentication of course. With 2FA, your password security (not strength, that's different but very related) is less important. Security requires the vector of attack to be small, so having a bunch of accounts with the same password decreases the security (but not strength) of your password.

Requiring frequent changes to passwords on average causes less secure and less strong passwords to be used, and causes the lost password recovery to be more frequently used, which is, in and of itself, a vector of vulnerability.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

The recommendation is every six months. But that's based on companies faithfully reporting breaches to everyone right away. Which they haven't been. You could probably leave sites that aren't hooked to a payment for every six months, but email, bank, and anything that has payment details should be changed more often.