Password Contraints
March 27, 2011 2:20PM
For my new job working for the Federal Government, I've had to register for a number of administrative services, such as benefits management, online training systems, remote network access, etc. At last count, I now have nine separate account names and passwords for all the various systems I must use. In addition, the passwords cannot be the same and there is a policy that you are not supposed to write the passwords down. The requirements for passwords comically strict. Here's the latest.

Your Password
  • must be 6 to 14 characters,
  • must contain at least one character from 3 of the 4 following categories:
       English upper case letters (A-Z)
       English lower case letters (a-z)
       Westernized Arabic numerals (0-9)
       Special characters limited to: ! # $ % * _ +
  • cannot contain your first name, last name, User ID, or Ssn,
  • cannot match your current or two prior passwords
Seems a little extreme to me.

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