What methods are behind password picking? Passwords are something that everyone uses every day, automatic or not. Passwords have developed a sort of secret culture behind themselves. I have a theory that if you were to look at any one person's set of passwords you could tell very much about that person. Why?
People tend to use personal things as passwords. Things they're interested in, things they collect, people they admire or love, etc. This is what makes passwords sometimes easy to guess if you know a person. This is also why passwords could serve as a strange and distorted description of someone. When people don't use personal things as passwords, the passwords tend to be careless and random. When someone signs up for the New York Times online they throw a dummy username and password. They're only in it for the article, so why should they register seriously?
I think passwords tell us about how people view themselves. They tell us about how people view the Internet, or any other situation that requires a password. Passwords are a small window to the inner workings of the human mind.
Then again, I'm probably wrong.
Passwords are often nonsense that can be remembered easily as well. So, in effect, passwords are in no way a peering into the human mind. But the subconscious act of picking a random password prevents it from being that random. The use of dates in number form is common in passwords. Am I begging the question here?
Why do people pick the passwords that they pick? I don't know why I pick mine, but I'd be glad to. I know the ones that I have seen other people accidentally reveal are often significant others' names or other such personal information. I tend to pick passwords that I know I will never forget. Hence, they are things I am familiar with, and interestingly so, because they are things not many people know I am familiar with. I like the mystery behind passwords.
Allow me to come to a compromise with...myself. Sometimes passwords are an intricate and interesting way to peek inside someone's mind. Other times they're just random sequences of characters that someone can remember easily. Either way, they provide a way for the world to hide itself...from...itself. Right.
I will node again no more forever.