Ask PG: What if I forget my password?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=587256

by csomar • 17 years ago

29 45 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I tried to log today (just by now), but I forgot my password, I even forgot if I had signed a simple account or using the click pass (i finally logged by trying the different signs up and the Google one worked for me).

I wander why HN don't implement a simple Passowrd recovery application, that let you recover your password using your username and send you the password reset to email.

Or what if I did forget my pass??

pg3• 17 years ago

It isn't that common. If it becomes more common I'll write something for it.

geuis• 17 years ago

pg, can you personally help this fellow out? Its such as a rare occurrence, like you said, and its always good to be able to retrieve your account. I lost at least 2 accounts on Digg over the years(before I stopped using it) and was never able to retrieve them.

uggedal• 17 years ago

http://www.memorise.org/

pg3• 17 years ago

I did. In fact that is the default solution: when someone forgets their password they email me and I reset it for them (if they put their email addr in their profile).

zellynhunter• 17 years ago

How do you know whether it's common or not? I've sat there several times trying to remember my password, remember whether I used Clickpass or not, etc. Finally, I just decide it's not worth commenting, and close the browser tab. (Posting under newly created account because I still can't figure out my old account's password.)

pg3• 17 years ago

We log failed login attempts.

EGF• 17 years ago

I am in exactly the same position - I abandoned an old account since there was no way to do this.

kingsley_20• 17 years ago

Yes, it's happened to me too. Mostly because I thought I'd signed in with clickpass, which I had, but had also created a password. It did come to me finally, or I'd be stuck using HN from the same machine.

tialys• 17 years ago

About 3 weeks ago, I got so irritated with trying to log in from time to time that I sat down for about an hour and tested every fat-finger combination of the password I used that I could think of. I took me about 40 tries, but I finally found that I'd hit a letter twice (somehow in both fields!). I really wanted to keep everything under my account, so I wasn't going to just make a new account, but it frustrated me to no end that I couldn't just reset my password and move on. Since finding my password, I've changed it to something else, but also added an openid account, so on the rare chance this happens again, hopefully I won't be left out in the cold.

diN0bot2• 17 years ago

or just write it down...i mean, if someone gets access to your harddrive, stealing your hn account is probably the least of your worries.

dreamz• 17 years ago

i've also noticed problems such as submissions and comments not going thru, though it has nothing to do with password problem but still...

tjic• 17 years ago

It's happened to me. I had to jump through hoops to get it back (a browser had it stored, so I set the browser to use a proxy, then had the proxy spit out the form including my password)

arantius• 17 years ago

Much simpler solution: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/forms.html#view_pass...

LeBleu• 17 years ago

I'm curious how you know its not common. I know there are multiple posts on the suggestion board about it, including my own. (Work browser had login credentials cached, but I couldn't figure out what I used to log in at home. I think I finally just used work browser to set a password, cuz I couldn't remember which OpenID I used.)

presty• 17 years ago

on an unrelated issue, is it possible to merge the posts (and karma) of one account into another one?

vinc456• 17 years ago

Just make a new account.

mattmaroon2• 17 years ago

But then you lose your karma.

KirinDave2• 17 years ago

Some might consider that a good thing. I respect the karma of who has gained a lot of Karma in 2009 a lot more than people from previous, when HN was smaller and points were easier to get.

aristoxenus• 17 years ago

Gives you an opportunity to practice another buddhist/zen concept: letting go

mattmaroon2• 17 years ago

Kind of a tough problem since you don't give an email address when you sign up. You just pick a username and password. I can't really think of a reasonably secure way to deliver a new password in that scenario.

JeremyChase• 17 years ago

I had trouble recovering my password because the username is case sensitive, and I didn't realize it. I thought I was jeremychase and created a 2nd account until I figured out the case issue.

RossM• 17 years ago

I had a similar issue - I forgot I'd registered with an OpenID and thus when attempting to login couldn't figure out why it would fail, even when using the correct case.

paulgb• 17 years ago

I know it doesn't solve the problem now, but if you worry about forgetting passwords, SuperGenPass is a pretty good solution: http://supergenpass.com/

(I have not involvement with that site except as a user, but it's one of those things that I feel compelled to plug because it has made my life so much easier.)

tezza• 17 years ago

Thanks paulgb, useful link

This topic has come up many times on Slashdot... I'll share my digest of interesting link

Pronouncable Passwords :: http://www.multicians.org/thvv/gpw.html :: generate a memorable basis point, add unique randomness on top. Very good for teams where the secret 'salt' is shared, but you can remind teammates which password is used verbally

Keepass :: http://keepass.info/ :: Self encrypting db with GUI tools

Diceware :: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html :: offline strong password generator

superchink• 17 years ago

Or for any losers on OS X, I highly recommend 1Password: http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

It stores an encrypted DB accessible via a master password, and it works great with something like DropBox if you use multiple machines. It also works w/ multiple logins per site.

biohacker422• 17 years ago

I have no idea what my password is. I when I "signed up" I just typed something random on the keyboard as my password.

If I'm ever logged out I will lose all my shiny karma points. Those ain't worth much, c'est la vie.

icey• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/resetpw

csomar• 17 years ago

Good I didn't know about it, it can help a lot of people that are logged in :D

biohacker422• 17 years ago

Thanks, but jeez people it's just internet karma, it ain't that important.

nod• 17 years ago

I'd like a way to easily bind/remember "Which click pass site did I use?" for my account. I don't get logged out often, but when I do I usually try 2 or 3 different sites (eg. Google, Facebook, etc) before finding the one that links to my HN account.

And I'd be fine with "nod" -> "Facebook" (e.g.) mapping being public.

quellhorst• 17 years ago

1Password doesn't forget my passwords, even if they are a 50 character hash.

g_lined• 17 years ago

I, for one, very much appreciate the fact this site doesn't require an e-mail address.

Many websites should offer e-mail-less logons since it's simply not necessary to have password retrieval or anything but basic authentication.

It makes signing up much easier. Since convenience is generally the price of security, I appreciate it when a website affords me the convenience of using the correct level of security.

GordonRobertson• 17 years ago

Another option for generating passwords - http://simplepassword.com/?&domain=news.ycombinator.com

Ask PG: What if I forget my password?

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