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> This is why major organisations don't allow usernames to be name_surname or nsurname. They pick random usernames. I remember when I was a student my username

> This is why major organisations don't allow usernames to be name_surname or nsurname. They pick random usernames. I remember when I was a student my username was a random string with characters and numbers. sounds more like an artifact of early garbagey email systems than any sound security policy. certainly i've seen nothing of the sort from any organization since a VM/CMS system in the early 90's. > This makes it more difficult to hack my account (without prior knowledge, shoulder surfing, etc.) since it was highly unlikely you could guess my username and my password. this doesn't make any sense. if i generate my passwords by a perfectly reasonable, robust procedure, and then prepend them with the string "password", and disclose this fact publicly, they become no less secure. the username is just like a publicly announced string prepended onto your (hopefully) securely generated password.

HenryBemis 7y ago
Authentication includes both username and password. In a bank I used to work my username was a random 10 digit number. Very annoying to type all the time. The good thing is, if you want to use my account, good luck guessing both my username and my password. Does that make sense? I do not imply that password should not be complex etc. I am merely pointing out the benefits of having a difficult to guess username.
- sigstoat 7y ago
  > Does that make sense? no, it does not. just add more bits of entropy to your password if you want more "unguessability". there's no benefit to putting it into the username. the username and password fields can be imagined as a single field; whether the entropy is at the start or end of the field makes no difference. we just split them up for database efficiency reasons. (and because the username ends up displayed some places.) > I do not imply that password should not be complex etc. I do understand that's not your implication > I am merely pointing out the benefits of having a difficult to guess username. i'm saying that if your password is good enough, it doesn't matter what your username is. the same way that if the last 50% of your password is "good enough", it doesn't matter if you plaster the first 50% of it onto billboards.

HenryBemis 7y ago

Authentication includes both username and password. In a bank I used to work my username was a random 10 digit number. Very annoying to type all the time. The good thing is, if you want to use my account, good luck guessing both my username and my password. Does that make sense? I do not imply that password should not be complex etc. I am merely pointing out the benefits of having a difficult to guess username.

sigstoat 7y ago
> Does that make sense? no, it does not. just add more bits of entropy to your password if you want more "unguessability". there's no benefit to putting it into the username. the username and password fields can be imagined as a single field; whether the entropy is at the start or end of the field makes no difference. we just split them up for database efficiency reasons. (and because the username ends up displayed some places.) > I do not imply that password should not be complex etc. I do understand that's not your implication > I am merely pointing out the benefits of having a difficult to guess username. i'm saying that if your password is good enough, it doesn't matter what your username is. the same way that if the last 50% of your password is "good enough", it doesn't matter if you plaster the first 50% of it onto billboards.