Shocking good sense -- write down your passwords!!!

Microsoft's Jesper Johansson is getting attention for an excellent point:  Writing down passwords is a good thing, because it allows better passwords.  Bruce Schneier makes a key supporting point:

We're all good at securing small pieces of paper. I recommend that people write their valuable passwords down on a small piece of paper, and keep it with their other valuable small pieces of paper: in their wallet.*

In addition to the good points made in those articles, there's one more thing that needs saying, which is that there are a LOT of reasons people should have multiple passwords.  Because, if they only have one password across multiple sites:

• Their password might be shoulder-surfed or otherwise picked up by somebody; they may even give it out for a good reason some time.
• Their password may be in a database that is hacked (especially if they use it for some small website with inadequate security.
• Their password may be phished.
• Their password may be captured by what is so far a mercifully unknown form of phishing -- somebody may create a real website, solely to capture passwords and perhaps other identity info, then deliberately turn over that info be used for bad purposes.

Truth be told, I only use a few different passwords total.  And most of them would be very hard to guess, except the ones at sites where I just registred with curtmonash or something because I don't care.  Still, I'm seriously considering switching over to this new plan.  Now if I could only stop misplacing my wallet!

*Of course, this isn't so great an idea for PIN numbers that are used along with cards you carry in your wallet, but if  somebody can't memorize a six-character-word or six-digit-number, why exactly are they being trusted with access to significant cash anyway??   The basic tradeoff I'm endorsing here is that you get to write down your passwords if they are strong and varied.