Your paranoia with regard to your PM username is unfounded.

You know the saying... "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

I rather think that being paranoid about computer security is generally a good thing. It's a question of how that paranoia manifests itself. For instance, it's good to be paranoid enough that the thought of reusing your perlmonks password elsewhere never even occurs to you. We do, afterall, need to deal with reality as it is.

That said, I'd prefer it we had a secure login. I wouldn't even mind a self-signed cert.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

With this level of worry over passwords,
you should not use the same password for more than one system. ;-)

If you must, then use just a few. Use one for 'open' type systems,
another for 'secure' systems and another for 'very important' systems.

This might help out with the real world issues.

Use one for 'open' type systems,

I use a different one for each system where my password is transmitted in plaintext unless I consider the account to be a throw-away account.

another for 'secure' systems and another for 'very important' systems.

I use several different ones depending on the level of security and my trust of the system. I never reuse passwords for web sites (even secure ones) on shell accounts, for instance. In fact, I generally don't reuse web site passwords at all because I have no idea how they are stored on the other end. I don't mix root passwords with user account passwords. I never share passwords between work accounts and personal accounts. I draw yet another line between machines I own and machines I don't.

All in all, I've got an obscene number of passwords. The most important 30 or so I have memorized. Still, I keep a list, encrypted with a 2048 bit key, on my PDA. I try to choose good, very hard to crack, passwords for everything important and so I rarely change them (except at work where regularly changing some passwords is a requirement.)

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";