What is MementoKey?

MementoKey is a new way of creating and remembering passwords. It is not a password manager, we don’t store your passwords at all, not on the cloud, not in your browser, not on your computer. After you create a password with MementoKey it exists only in your head – but don’t worry, using our system you will have a strong, secure password that’s hard to forget.

How does it work?

When you create a new password with MementoKey we create four pairs of words for you. For each pair of words, one is part of your password, and the other is a reminder. For example, if your word pair is "Happy Frog" then you would picture a happy frog, and memorise that. The "Happy" part is your reminder, or memento, and is not secret. The "Frog" part is secret, known only to you. When you need to remember your password, you can see the non-secret prompt "Happy", and that reminds you of your mind-picture of a happy frog, and you know that the first part of your password is "Frog".

There are four word pairs, so your complete password is four words long.

Is it secure?

Four randomly-chosen words makes a cryptographically strong and secure password, far more so than 8 random characters. For passwords, length is the most important factor, but it is also important that your password is not chosen according to any pattern (no quotes from books, no meaningful sentences, etc.). As long as you never write down or disclose your private words, your password is secure. You can write down your public words to remind you of your private ones, of course – that’s what they’re there for.

After your password has been generated, it is never possible to recover it again. Using the same username and site name will not result in the same private words, and the private words that were generated for you are not stored anywhere. If you do completely forget your password, you must use the "Lost password" procedures from the site you are using it for – MementoKey can’t help you.

How do I create a password?

Just put in a username, and a site name, and click the "Create Password" button. It doesn’t matter what you use as the username and site name; those are only there so that you can get the same public (reminder) words back for the password you created. If you are going to write down your public words yourself, then just put any letters or numbers in for the username and we’ll generate a password from those.

How do I remember my password?

To see your public words, just put in the same username and site name that you used to generate the password, and click the "Show public key" button. You can then use these words to remind you of the private words which, together, are your password.