How to Use Password Generators Without Causing Lockouts
Random password generators give you strong passwords, but they can also leave you locked out of your own accounts. Here is my method. Password generators are one of the first online tools I started using seriously, and they have caused me both relief and pain. The relief is having a unique, strong password for every account without thinking. The pain is the lockouts when a generated password is too strong for the site, contains disallowed characters, or fails to save in my password manager. After a few years of using them, I have a method that maximizes the relief and minimizes the pain. Here is what I do. Match the Generator to the Site Rules Every site has its own password rules. Some allow special characters, some do not. Some require a minimum length of twelve, some cap at twenty. Some insist on at least one of each character class, some forbid certain characters because of legacy database bugs. A password that violates a rule fails at the form, or worse, fails silently and locks the account on the next login. I check the site rules before I generate. Most password generators let me set length, character classes, and which symbols are allowed. More tutorials are on the KitCraft Blog.