Only Five Percent of Users Have Non-Letter Characters in Their Passwor

On the computer that has my business records and other important info: bios startup PW, HDD PW, 20+ digit trucrypt PW, 20+ digit account password, 2048 bit encryption on the RAID array.

Maybe this is old news to most, but I got away from passwords a while back. I decided to use an easily remembered (for me) pass-phrase instead and reduce it down to upper/lower case letters, numbers and special characters. For example, the phrase "A quick brown fox jumped over one lazy dog" could be reduced to: @qBfJO1Ld. Make your own pass phrase as long as you want for added security and customize it for each website by adding a prefix, suffix, or something in the middle. Again as an example, for this forum I could add w7F or W7f and my password could be @qBfJO1LdW7f. Just some food for thought.

Account passwords don't matter if you don't encrypt important files (or the entire system) and lock the BIOS and the HDD with a password.. especially with a laptop. It takes about 10 seconds to boot nearly any laptop into linux with a USB flash drive (which will bypass any account passwords), then start copying files to an external. (which is probably part of the reason the university uses MacBooks) Very few people have the skill needed to crack a bios password protected HDD. Even that isn't always going to prevent a thief from simply replacing the HDD, resetting BIOS and reinstalling windows, but if you use bitlocker, combined with the more secure encryption in truecrypt, and don't keep the backup keys stored anywhere near the laptop itself.. at least important files won't be compromised. I doubt anyone outside of law enforcement or the NSA would know how to crack a truecrypt protected HDD without the recovery key.

close your eyes and type a password with your fingers deliberately on the wrong keyboard row. (only works if you learned the wrong way to type and always use the left shift button.)

8e0h53f3hih02j60qww204e =
idontevenknowmypassword

NoN said:

(only works)

humm...i can't have it working

I should clarify. It will only work intuitively if you learned the wrong way to type and always use the left shift button. It will still work if you know how to type without looking at he keyboard but don't always use the left shift key exclusively. Closing your eyes while you type makes it less likely the you will hesitate and try to correct the "error". It can be done while you're looking at the keys, but that increases the likelihood of creating a password you'll never be able to duplicate even if you remember the phrase it's based on because of the semiconscious tendency to automatically aim for the key you're thinking of as you type it.

another way is to have just one hand on the wrong key row

then you get:
IDontEvenKnowWhatMyPasswordIs =
IEon5#f3nKno2@hqrMyPqww24eIw or
*D0htEvejIh0wWyatJ6)assw0rd*s