Password Length/Strength

[John Doe]

Thanks for making PasswordMaker, first of all.

Question: According to the password strength meter, longer passwords are sometimes less secure than shorter ones. How is this possible? The longer one still contains the shorter one, but adds additional characters. Surely this is a mistake, no?

[tanstaafl]

The meter isn't very accurate. It is on the list of things to fix, but isn't considered a high priority.

As for password strength - the more characters + the more non alpha-numeric characters, the stronger the password.

I use the default character set, 12 character length, and add 3 more random characters (random for anyone else that is) in a random (again, for anyone else but me) pattern prior to submission to the site, for a 15 character password.

[Eric H. Jung]

The meter is just eye candy, really, because the algorithm used to calculate strength is really lame... just as tanstaafl wrote. I have to fix that.