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Passwords and typing timing

I type my 17-character password very fast. It’s a strictly automatic process, all muscle-memory.

The timing is very critical and synchronization problems happen a lot. There’s lots of hand-alternation; sometimes one hand is a decisecond early or late and I type a letter out of order. Sometimes I hit J instead of H because the “down” muscles are faster than the “left” muscles.

All these errors are compounded because I don’t actually know my password consciously. I’m not typing a word, I’m just activating a motor program. I don’t think “H”, I just put my finger “where it’s supposed to go next”. So all the error-correction in the cerebellum and motor cortex that I’ve built up from a decade of typing never has a chance to help.

Amusingly, I can type my ordinary and root passwords just fine under the influence of alcohol. So a complex password isn’t an IID for a computer.

On a darkly humorous note, many years from now, this may be an excellent stroke diagnostic. If I can’t type my password without concentrating, it’s time to call the paramedics.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 22:47 and is filed under Coding, Doing, Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “Passwords and typing timing”

  1. Boughter says:
    February 25, 2009 at 00:32

    Same with me Joeymon. Yet when we administer this stroke detection scheme how will we know that you didn’t just type gibberish in? I mean, we wouldn’t know the difference…

  2. Boughter says:
    February 25, 2009 at 00:32

    (p.s., did you take away openID login or was that someone else’s blog?)

  3. Boughter says:
    February 25, 2009 at 01:10

    (p.s. did you take away openID login or was that someone else’s blog?)

  4. Michael says:
    February 25, 2009 at 21:16

    Recently the (let’s say, for the sake of example) ‘j’ key on my keyboard broke off. It destroyed my ability to type one of my passwords for a long time, because I had to concentrate more to hit the ‘j’ key, that slowed me down, and broke the timing.

    I just modified my password muscle memory instead of replacing the ‘j’ key…

  5. Auston says:
    March 1, 2009 at 17:49

    Unfortunately at work they make us change our password every 30 (or is it 60?) days. Let’s just say, theoretically of course, I append or retract a single char every time to make life easier…

  6. Jess says:
    March 8, 2009 at 04:29

    Essentially, you are offloading memory onto your muscles, transforming the task into muscle coordination. :D

  7. Joe Auricchio says:
    March 10, 2009 at 12:44

    Sometimes I hate WP… I think the 2.7 upgrade broke OpenID.

  8. Boughter says:
    March 10, 2009 at 19:04

    p.s. sorry for the double post.