Solution for password/pin challenges that on ask for certain characters ?

tommm

Does anyone have an efficent method with dealing with password/pin challenges that only want the 3rd, 5th and 13th characters from your password ? I presume these can't be autofilled ? When I used to have my passwords in an encrypted file, I used courier font (even spacing) and separated each character by a space and then on the following line underneath each character I placed the position of each character so I could quickly read the 5th, 11th and 16th characters. I guess I could try this in the notes field, but I suspect (perhaps unfairly - I haven't tried) that between the Android app, various browser plugins, and 1Passwords app, that the font and therefore spacing might 'break' my method.

Anybody got a solution or something better ?

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PeterG_1P

Hi @tommm, thanks for this question. This is potentially a tricky one. I'll confer with some of our colleagues here and will hope to have more for you soon. Just for future reference, are these challenges something you run into often?

Thanks, we'll look forward to your reply!

tommm

Yes, lots of my bank and financial logins want me to remember a pin number or a memorable word. Then they want me to enter someting like characters 4, 8, 13 & 15- Sometimes not in order e.g. they may ask for characters 5, 3, 6, 1 (in that order). I'm surprised you haven't come across this more often. I would say about 40% of these types of login want this now.

PeterG_1P

Hi @tommm, thanks for the reply! I've done a little research on this and it appears that the approach you've mentioned is more common in some countries than others (potentially why I haven't run into it much yet).

It turns out this is also something that another customer asked about a while back, and one our developers responded to explain some of the technical challenges that might prevent us from implementing a solution to this specific type of password prompt. However, I have re-submitted the idea to our development team internally to see if we can revisit it.

I hope this is helpful. In the meantime, the best idea I've got is to use the Show in Large Type feature in 1Password, so that when the websites ask for specific digits they'll be easier for you to identify, and you won't have to write it down in a notepad to count out the digits or anything like that.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain this, and I wish I could provide a better immediate solution. We'll re-examine this question for the road ahead!