"xyzzy" is not a good password

2017-11-07T00:43:34Z

Apparently someone signed up for the website "Plentyoffish" using my gmail address; I ignored the first email about it, but after three I decided it was worth the trouble of deactivating the account.

That meant asking for a password reset email, using it to change the password, and then deactivating the account.

Since I'm not going to use the account for anything, ever, I didn't want to bother picking a good, or even long password. So, what the hell, try "xyzzy". I really didn't expect it to work, but it did. There are reasons why xyzzy is a bad password, beyond its being brief and containing only lower-case letters; on the other hand, this is a refreshing change from sites that have complicated requirements that you can discover only by trying passwords that don't match them.

Permanently removing the account was straightforward except that it asked for my reason, and had neither a free-text option nor "because someone else signed my email address up without asking." So, I picked "too many jerks," since I've had exactly no non-jerky interactions with anyone there. (I don't actually think the person who signed up with my address is a jerk; my gmail address is my first initial and last name, and it would be easy to type v instead of c, f, or b. If they try again, I'll ask for a password reset email, and change the profile to something like "this username belongs to a jerk who has signed a stranger's email up here twice. Don't date them."

(I'm used to getting random password reset emails from Twitter, where my handle there is my first name.)

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Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

"xyzzy" is not a good password