A near mishap involving my suP3r_5eCuRe password

May 21st, 2008 by Mike | Posted in blog, mac os x, random, rant |

Given I am a web geek, I know the importance having a good password when it comes to sites like PayPal, eBay, Facebook, etc. all for the sake of not wanting my shit to get stolen, but every now and again I find myself doing something really stupid: beginning to type my password as soon as I see a dialog box asking for my password.

Now, if you didn’t know, I use a Mac and like any Mac user I have a Keychain which holds all of my passwords for applications and such, easing my mind as I don’t have to remember all of my amazing passwords for various sites and applications (which I usually end up remembering anyways). The thing about having a Keychain is that occasionally (or very often in my case) you are prompted by applications like Dreamweaver or Cyberduck to ‘unlock’ your keychain to grant access temporarily to the application to use a stored username/password of some sort. My problem is that when those dialog boxes pop up asking for my password, I sometimes don’t think and just start typing my password no matter what application I’m currently using.

And that’s the problem. A lot of the time I’m using applications like Adium, Dreamweaver, Twitterrific or some other application that has a text field to which I can type and once in a strange while I’ll see a prompt for my password and just start typing. Given that I’m such an awesome typist, I usually fly through my password in a snap and just slam on the return key and what do you know, my password just got sent in an IM or just got sent to Twitter (dear Christmas that could be bad) or I just typed my password right on my screen for all at work to see. It’s a (possible) nightmare.

See, I’ve done this twice now. You can ask my friend Nate. I’ve sent him two different and equally secure and awesome passwords. He’s a pal of mine, but for the sake of security I had to change my password… twice.

Now, I have to ask: Has anyone out there had any mishaps or horror-based stories invovlving their password(s)?