Create easy to remember, hard to guess passwords with Password Bird

by Simon Kerbel Apr 10th 2008

Password Bird is a simple online service that will create a password based on a number of personal markers. Because the password is culled from a few names and dates that are important to you, the hope is that the password will be easy to remember but remain hard to crack.

So how does it work? When you visit Password Bird, you are prompted to enter in three items:

A name that is important or special to you
A word that is special to you
A date that has personal significance

After that, you hit the create password button, and Password Bird goes to work. The next page will show you the customized password. If you don't like the password, Password Bird can quickly generate a new one based on the personal markers; or, you can choose to start over completely with a new set of words and dates.

The question is, does Password Bird make secure, yet easy to remember, passwords? In our test, we used the name Simon, the word Technology, and 1/1/2000 for the date. Here's what Password Bird came up with:

00simogy
01tecmon
ogysim00
simtec20

It doesn't take the guy from A Beautiful Mind to see a pattern here.

What do you guys think? Useful service or not?

[via Technobuzz]

Tags: password, password bird, PasswordBird

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jason said 2:08PM on 4-10-2008

Well, first, I'd say it's important to not measure this against "perfect" passwords but rather encourage people who use horrible passwords to at least move up to an app like this.

I mean, this is a huge improvement over "teapot" or "happygirl" kind of stuff.

archpope said 2:21PM on 4-10-2008

I would hope that the typical DS reader uses more sophisticated passwords than this, but something like this would be perfect for my mom, who uses the name of the city she lives in as her password.

LeeH said 2:31PM on 4-10-2008

Add a couple of special characters and those passwords would be reasonably good.

RobD said 3:01PM on 4-10-2008

This is pretty much the exact kind of service I would setup if I wanted to harvest a bunch of personal information for Evil uses.

Mark said 3:01PM on 4-10-2008

It's alright. Personally I would rather use http://www.passwordmeter.com/ Sure, you have to think up your own password but I like how it grades you on the password you chose.

BTW, all the passwords you got when you used Password Bird got 'weak' ratings with Password Meter.

Transcontinental said 4:22PM on 4-10-2008

Only safe passwords I know are >=32 character upper/lower + digit + custom passwords. All depends on required security.

tortilla riot said 10:48AM on 4-11-2008

I prefer prounceable passwords, like this one:

http://www.sloppycode.net/tools/password-generator.aspx

Marshall said 3:00PM on 4-11-2008

If you gave me those words, I would tell you that "Simon Loves Technology!" is a better choice, both in security and in terms of remembering. Long live passphrases!

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