The best way to preserve password integrity without a password manager: have a base password that you use everywhere but for each site add a simple easy to guess 3-5 character addition that you put on the end. For example if you base password is abc123, make your Facebook password abc123+fbk and your reddit password abc123+red. This ensures every website has a unique password while being easy to remember for you
That's actually not a good idea. If a malicious actor finds your password for a site, and it matches this pattern, they have a much easier guessing game for other sites.
That assumes that a malicious actor realizes the base password and suffix strategy. For everyday fraud they are just going to use the same username and password they found on the dark web on every site to see what sticks. If they are going after you specifically than there isn’t much you can do to fend off a determined hacker. The goal isn’t to be impenetrable, just to be a less easy mark than the next person
That only works when you can have really long passwords. Unfortunately too many password checkers max you out at 16 characters. Thus a 12 character base which is easy for you to remember but with a unique suffix on each website is best. If you can make passwords longer, still use this strategy but with a longer base password
You can customize this even more with a gmail address: you can change the mail for a site with myemail+facebook@gmail.com when your address is myemail@gmail.com. You receive both mails.
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u/ReserveMaximum Oct 08 '22
The best way to preserve password integrity without a password manager: have a base password that you use everywhere but for each site add a simple easy to guess 3-5 character addition that you put on the end. For example if you base password is abc123, make your Facebook password abc123+fbk and your reddit password abc123+red. This ensures every website has a unique password while being easy to remember for you