Passwords · Your old passwords
Is a list of my old passwords any use?
It is one of the questions I am asked most, and the answer surprises people: even if none of your old passwords is the wallet’s, together they are worth more than half a password, because they reveal how you build them.
Why it works
People don’t invent new passwords each time. We repeat structures: the same base word with variants, the number always in the same place, the same habit of ending with a symbol. If I see five of your passwords from that period, I don’t need to guess: I already know how you made them, and the search stops being blind.
It is the same principle that makes «I remember the pattern» so valuable, explained in I remember the pattern but not the numbers. The difference is that here you don’t remember the pattern: it is deduced from your own examples.
Where your old passwords are
- In your browser’s password manager, which keeps things from years ago.
- In managers you used and abandoned.
- In notebooks from that period.
- In sign-up emails from old services, which sometimes included them in plain text.
- In your memory, if you sit down for half an hour and list the services you used then and what you logged in with.
How to make it useful
- Don’t just note the passwords: note which service they were for and roughly which year.
- Mark which ones you used «for everything» and which were special.
- Note the variants you remember of each: with a different year, with a different symbol.
- Flag whether any was the one you used for important things: that is the strongest candidate for a wallet.