the trouble with saying that people might not recognise your screen name and associate that with you is that you'll find that over forums, especially friendly ones lie this, you'd give away far more information that you might to a stranger in the street.
I mean a search of these forums would likely revel my name, birth date, the country where I live, even the city where I live, and some of my previous address history. which is quite a lot of information, and could quite easily link back to me.
as for password policy.
it is best not to have the same password for all your sites,
it's also best not to write down passwords, either on your computer, or near your computer.
good security would always have to be a compromise between being able to remember a password and a complex password. and having different passwords for different sites...
for example I have a banking password I use on all the banking sites I need to access.
I have a mail password used on any mail accounts I have.
I have a specific forum password for this site unused elsewhere cause I have mod rights here.
and I have a general forum password for most other sites.
then I have work specific passwords, so on all out clients I generally have the same user name/password to get access to systems.
so I know if I'm on a banking website what password I would be using,
if I'm on a forum I know what password to use, (for any forum i'm signed up to).
if I'm at work I know what password to use.
Also the best passwords are ones that you could close your eyes and still type. whilst still being complex.
don't think that complexity means L33t sp34K, P455w0rd is just as insecure as Password. and would be included in most dictionary attacks.
I tend to rely on either keyboard patterns, (e.g !0QpAlZm extreme left right keys on a keyboard with shift pressed for all left keys).
or Two word combinations, with numbers the numbers can increment based on a known variable.
e.g MilkFloat0809, then next month MilkFloat0909, etc
Those passwords are easy to change, easy to remember and easily pass any complexity requirements for a password.
(and no, I haven't told you any passwords that I actually use, there are a lot of keyboard patterns, you can even make patterns site dependant.
ComputerForums password might be
Cvbnm,./Fghjkl
just start with the initial letters and move along the keyboard the amount of letters to complete a word. -that method would be easy to remember and you can use a different password for every site you go to, and your password hint for each site is clearly written in the address bar. (but only you know how to make the password hint give you the password!).
Password vaults are a nice method for storing passwords, (assuming that the vault itself is secure!), but what if you're at a friends house and want to check your email? you don't have access to your password vault then.
