However, it doesn’t matter whether the password is strong or not, if it’s forgotten for whatever reason, then you can basically say goodbye to that password forever and, with it, the account that it belongs to. But that doesn’t have to be the case because, as it turns out, the human brain can store many things in the subconscious, including seemingly forgotten passwords. All that’s needed to recover this lost info is hypnosis, the therapeutic method often used to enhance the memory and hopefully to help that password resurface from the depths of the mind.
You will remember your password in 3, 2, 1…
Hypnosis is often considered to be a fraud, which is not surprising considering the sensationalized depiction of hypnotherapy in fiction. However, apart from the moment where the subject enters into a deep, sleep-like trance, hypnotherapy is nothing more than taking a guided nosedive into the subconscious to access something that is thought have to been forgotten but is in fact just buried deep inside the mind. And contrary to popular belief, the hypnotherapist is only there to help patients become relaxed and give them some well-considered suggestions that eventually leads them to discover what they have been looking for.
This is exactly what Jason Miller, a certified professional hypnotist, does for his clients, most of which are Bitcoin e-wallet users wanting to recover their long-forgotten passwords to profit from the cryptocurrency craze. He charges half a bitcoin plus a 5% recovery fee for each of his sessions, but between 50% and 80% of his clientele reported that they successfully recalled their passwords. The reason behind the high success rate is that Miller doesn’t force his clients to remember; instead, he asks them to stop stressing about the lost password and, by controlling their breathing and relaxing each muscle, just let the memories flood in until the password resurfaces on its own.
The ultimate password recovery tool?
Although it seems that hypnotherapy can indeed be helpful – and even Redditors say that it’s worth giving it a shot – hypnosis is far from the ideal solution when it comes to remembering passwords.
A famous example of the failure of hypnosis is the case of Mark Freuenfelder, who had multiple hypnotherapy sessions in vain before he found the solution in the form of a teenage hacker with whom he eventually managed to crack his lost Trezor password. But even therapists take hypnosis with a pinch of salt: Veronika Marymur, a bitcoin hypnotist from Russia, says that only half of her clients were able to recall their passwords at the end of a session. And even Jason Miller admits that the success of hypnosis is heavily dependent on various factors, such as the client’s own capabilities to recall information.
Simply put, despite being useful in many occasions there is absolutely no guarantee that hypnotherapy is going to work in recovering long-forgotten passwords.
What to do then?
Hypnotherapy is not complete bogus and if you manage to learn self-hypnosis, then you don’t even need to visit a therapist. However, since success is not guaranteed at all – neither with nor without a professional hypnotist – it’s better to ensure your passwords won’t be forgotten too easily.
One way to achieve that is by creating complex yet memorable passwords either by coming up with them on your own or by turning to a password generator that can be set up to generate passwords resembling actual – and therefore pronounceable – words.
The other option is to admit to yourself that there is no chance you’ll be able to keep all those passwords in your brain and, instead, just jot down logins into a password logbook or, better yet, put them into the vault of a password manager. In fact, opting for such a program gives you the freedom to just simply ignore those complex passwords that belong to your accounts and, in return, only requires you to remember a single password, the master password that is the virtual key to the safe vault that all those strong passwords are stored in.
Zoltán G.
Adam B.
