• Zachariah@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ll bite. Serious answer.

    If your password is required to only be a number, it has the smallest “girth” possible at only 10 possibilities for a length of one.

    If your password is required to only be a letter, it has more “girth” at only 26 possibilities for a length of one.

    If your password is required to only be a symbol, it’s probably about the same “girth” as letters.

    You could make the girth increase on your one-character password by requiring it to be any of those above, but that’s still just about 60 options.

    But length increases the security of a password exponentially. So if your password is required to be two numbers, you’re already of 100 options. Require only one more digit, and you’re at 1000, even with only ten choices per digit.

    So girth is far less important than length when it comes to passwords.

  • recapitated@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I went with password “length” because when I tried “girth” it said it couldn’t be the same as my username

  • smeg@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    Doesn’t matter if its long, if you reuse it everywhere then it’ll end up pretty useless. What I’m saying is that it’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it.