So I don't have to change 6 passwords every month to different systems, that all have a different format requirement......
(having just been prompted to change another one......)
So much this. Especially when they limit the length and prevent special characters then wonder why people give up on secure passwords or use a post-it note.
Don't forget it can't be similar to any of your last 100 passwords!
This morning at work, I changed my password because they forced me to.
My old pattern was: Someword345!. On my windows machine, I changed it to: Someword678! That went fine. After I did that, I couldn't log in to a program that I use every day. Turns out that the IT in my company stores passwords in some strange way that causes an hour delay to spread to other systems that use the same AD users. Luckily we also have a separate administrator user that I could access for a while to do some work.
But we also have a virtual machine with a separate password, which I always change to the same as my windows password. But when I entered my pwd change there, the virtual desktop interpreted it as a similar word. I tried like 8 times, sometimes not typing the 2 new passwords exactly the same way. And when I did type it correctly, it complaned about the password being similar to the old one. Obviously it only compared the word, not the other characters. So I ended up having to change my windows password once again, to be able to make the same passwords in the two desktops.
Now I have started my easter holiday, 10 days away from work. Jay! But when I come back on day 11, I will probably have forgotten when the new password is. I have forgotten it now already...