Random passwords not all that random

wombat
wombat
Community Member

Hi folks, I have noticed on a couple of occasions that when I generate a new 20 character password with symbols and numbers, as soon as I use it 1Password says it's a duplicate. It is correct in that. It seems your random generation of passwords could perhaps be a bit more random than it actually is. Not a huge problem as I just generate a new one but it seems this could use a little improvement.

Thanks.


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Comments

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @wombat - I'm sorry for the trouble...I'm also not sure I've ever seen such a thing before with 1Password's Strong Password Generator. You can open the SPG and move the slider up for total number of characters up and down and literally watch it creating fresh passwords for you in real time - each is generated on the spot; they're not pulled from a list or re-used. Ever.

    If you're getting the Watchtower message that a particular password is a duplicate, it's likely because you created a password item, and then either copied it over yourself into another item, or possibly created a Login item for the same site but didn't remove the existing Password item. That would result in what registers as a "duplicate" -- because there are two separate items in 1Password's database with the same password. What you won't see is 1Password generating a password for Site A that's an exact duplicate of a previously-generated password for Site B. Does this sound like what you experienced? If not, can you give some more concrete examples? (obviously, don't post any of your actual passwords here in this public forum).

  • wombat
    wombat
    Community Member

    Thanks for your reply @lars I'm almost certain that a password created for site A matched an existing site B. It's happened to me twice now but I can't reliably reproduce it. Today I wanted to generate a random password so I went to create one, gave it a name, clicked save and immediately Watchtower warned me this password had been used elsewhere. It was right too. I doubt this is enough information for you to do much. If I get it happening again I'll post here.

  • Sounds like a plan. Please keep us in the loop. I can't say that I've ever seen the password generator come up with two passwords that were even similar before.

    Ben

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