Password Regenerator - Annual Algorithm Changes |
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| What it is: On January 1st of each new year, Wantegrity implements a new algorithm for generating passwords. The look and feel of the new current year page will change (usually color and layout) to make it easier to notice that you're using a different algorithm for the current year. And, changes are made to improve the usefulness and utility of the tool. There will also be a warning notice on the page through January and February letting you know that you're using a new page with the new algorithm. NOTE: your master password and site key/identifiers don't change. |
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| Why do this: It is very important to regularly change your passwords on the websites that you use. Changing the password should happen atleast once a year. By changing your passwords regularly, if any one of the sites that you use gets hacked, then the stolen passwords won't be valid for any of the other sites AND won't be valid for the existing site either (as long as you changed the password of course). | |
| How does it work: The password regenerator page for the previous year will continue to be available to you via the "Previous" menu. This is necessary to help you to transition over from the previous year's algorithm to the current year's algorithm. Each previous page will be listed in the "Previous" drop down list according to its corresponding year ("Version 2019", "Version 2020", "Version 2021", and so on). So when each new year rolls over, you will want to change your password for each site as you login to each one of them. By the time you get through January and February, you will have changed most of the passwords for your sites over to the new page algorithm. For those sites that you don't login to that often, you will have to remember to use the correct previous year's page to get the correct corresponding (right) password. | |
| What are the steps for moving from the prior year to the new year page/algorithm: The process will look like this. For each site there will be a password transition from the old, previous year's password, to the new, current password. So you will login to each specific site, use the (now) previous year's password regenerator page to login. Then, go to the "change password" section of the site (usually under "user settings" or "user profile"). The site will most likely ask you to provide the old (previous year's) password again. Enter the old (previous) password in. Then, use the current year's regenerator page to obtain the new password for that particular site and enter that password into the new password field/s on the site (usually twice). And then save/submit the password change. That specific site has now been switched over to using the new password obtained from the current password regenerator. You will need to repeat this process for each of the sites that you use. Once you have changed your passwords over to use the current year password regenerator, you will no longer need to use the previous year's at all. It's a little extra work each year to go through this transition process but it is very important for the security of your accounts that you change your passwords as least once a year. Now, I myself have accounts that I don't login into very often, and it can be a bit of mystery as to which previous year's regenerator I used to login last. For those rarely used sites, I just use the password reset facility on the site itself to get a new password and then I login with that password and then use the password from the current regenerator and change the site password to that. | |
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