# Your Password is Too Damn Short

**URL:** <https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/your-password-is-too-damn-short/3266>\
**Category:** blog\
**Created:** [April 23, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/your-password-is-too-damn-short/3266 "2015-04-23T22:40:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 18

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**Author:** ![cryogenic](https://discourse-cdn.codinghorror.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v2/letter/c/439d5e/32.png) [@cryogenic](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/cryogenic)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2015, 8:13am UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/your-password-is-too-damn-short/3266/18 "2015-04-24T08:13:55Z")

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12 Characters in the minimum assuming you don’t use the same password on a site/system that stores it in plain text (people still do this in 2015 sadly), get’s hacked and your password ends up in a password database. .

You also need multiple passwords for all your accounts and never share critical software passwords with non critical software.  
I use the following pattern:  
Critical: Home banking accounts must use unique password not shared and very long (mine 20+ chars)  
High: Google like identity providers (15+ chars) not shared  
Medium: Social networks, 12+ but generated based on the same pattern with a derivation rule  
Low: Occasional accounts, 8 char throw away password, shared between all accounts.(I know this is bad, but I’m not a machine, I can’t memorize dozens of passwords. I also rather not use password managers, they appear to be the week link in case of an attack)

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