A PasswordCard is a credit card-sized card you keep in your wallet, which lets you pick very secure passwords for all your websites, without having to remember them! You just keep them with you, and even if your wallet does get stolen, the thief will still not know your actual passwords.
A very cute idea, well implemented.
Your PasswordCard has a unique grid of random letters and digits on it. The rows have different colors, and the columns different symbols. All you do is remember a combination of a symbol and a color, and then read the letters and digits from there. It couldn’t be simpler!
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It’s far safer to pick secure passwords and write them down, than it is to remember simple and easy to guess passwords. You already protect your wallet very well, and even if it does get stolen the thief will still not know which of the many thousands of possibilities on the card is your password.
This feels like a weaker version of GRC’s Off The Grid system. https://www.grc.com/offthegrid.htm
It doesn’t require you to remember something different per website. It’s designed so that you can turn any site name (E.g. Amazon) into a secure password which is unique to you. If you really need a completely offline solution, I don’t think it gets too much better than that.
All of these systems are great until you run into “password must be 9-11 characters and contain two symbols from a hidden list of acceptable symbols, which we will not expose to the user but instead only inform you you’ve chosen the wrong symbol”. I can’t see myself relying on a system like this for more than providing a secure password to my digital password manager.
That is quite a nice read. I think I’ll try using this system, as it looks fun. Thanks for that idea.
I’ve never really had a use case for it myself. I’m happy using Bitwarden at present. It’s certainly a fun read and a good solution for anyone in need of a completely offline solution.
I really like how easy it is to customise it so that even if someone got a copy of your square, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to get your passwords. Changing your starting row or column or adding a few characters at the start of the domain will completely change the output. I’d imagine you’d need both the square and multiple passwords to even attempt to brute force a solution back out of it.