I've been using my mac since mid-2018 without performing any clean installation and, despite I always try to keep my computers as "mess-free" as po...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Please do not do that, at least not without some consideration first. There are plenty of software solutions, services and sites out there, that struggle with passwords that long.
The best case you get is that they strip all the characters after the 12th (which seems to be some magic length after which problems start). Worst case is that your password is accepted, then horribly mangled before being stored in the database, resulting in an inability for you to log in.
Since you are already using a password-manager, you're not re-using passwords anymore - that means, you successfully eliminated one of the biggest password-related security risks out there. Making your passwords artificially longer does not add any meaningful security.
I used
pwgen -y 12to create the password "CophohJ#eo6o" and tested it against howsecureismypassword.net. It would take a modern computer over 30.000 years to crack this password, and even if we throw a lot of computing power against it, we'd still be talking about hundreds of years that it would take for someone to brute-force this password.Then I used
pwgen -y 32to create the password "nu5ca$JieQu1oozooph7Cu6nohchahQu", testing it against the same site. The result was that it would take roughly 2 Tredecillion years for someone to crack that password. Obviously, that's significantly longer than with a password that's only 12 characters long. But .. how realistic is it that the password in question is going to be still relevant in hundreds of years?(Please note that you should never randomly paste actual passwords into a third-party service, I was just using this as quick way of measuring the impact of the password-length.)
If you really want to enhance the security of your accounts, add a second factor to your authentication process. Which, coincidentally, is something password managers (at least 1Password has that feature) can help you with.
Thanks for your suggestions! Do you have any source of info about that thing you mention about not using very long passwords? I would like to read more about that topic before changing my passwords.
Great advice about using things like 2FA (that's one of the main reasons I'm using 1Password)
I can't give you any proper sources, unfortunately. Very few vendors tend to document that kind of behavior (for obvious reasons), so I can't offer anything more than my word, based on experiences.
Those are concrete products I can name you from the top of my head. I've had disappointing experiences with European financial systems as well, but those are anecdotal and I'm not entirely willing to flat-out condemn those products because of that.
One easy thing to forget is backing up
.envfiles or similar that are part of .gitignore.Totally agree! That's a good one Michael.
Great! I do this every year once or twice. To have a better overview I have created a Notion page for myself which holds any information I need. Maybe some day I will automate that process haha
notion.so/marvins/Setup-9ad349afe6... ← Go to section "MacBook"
Your notion page is super complete Marvin! I'm considering to build my own now. Thanks for the idea!
Thank you! I enabled duplicating it as a template so feel free to use it as your base :)
Thanks again Marvin!!
TLDR;
I m pushing my whole Documents folder to git.
I m really obsessed with backup. I m using cloud storage, git and multiple disks.
After I got repaired my MacBook in its early times, I saw all the files in TimeMachine were owned by another user, Emre, who was the previous account of mine on Mac, and I pretty shocked and disappointed. I used to expect files will be flown on their old places automatically.
An unexpected visitor in the middle of night stole all devices of my friend, including MacBook, iPad, and iPhones. He was storing all Documents folder in cloud storage. Cool. I Like that. I m doing the same thing but still not relaxed.
So I did, I pushed my whole Documents folder to git. I m pushing projects individually and pushing the folder.
Yes, I love pushing.
Maybe I should delete all project. That sounds relaxing.
I'm using cloud storage too! About using git for pushing docs sounds like a really good idea! I didn't thought about that possibility before! If you are obsessed with backups and security checkout 1Password is amazing!
Here what i do :
This allows me to keep everything synced at all times with backups, most importantly without the need for any 3rd party services like iCloud and GitHub as you can imagine the sensitivity of data being stored.
I didn't know about syncthing until now. It looks really cool I must say! Thanks for these tips!
1.5: research alternatives.
Any suggestions?
Well I guess I should expand :)
I mean if you make a list of the software you currently have installed, check out what else exists that does the same job. It's kind of a convenient time to switch things out. That's all!
I think you misunderstood the goal of the post. I wanted to share what things I do before erase my disk. The list of apps I'm currently using was just a plus.