4 ms·

Hostile? Really? How is typing '$' instead of '4' any different from typing 'A' instead of 'a'? They both use the same shift key. Watch, I'll do it again. How a

by alexqgb 15y ago

Hostile? Really? How is typing '$' instead of '4' any different from typing 'A' instead of 'a'? They both use the same shift key. Watch, I'll do it again. How about a seven? See? 7. Now for the ampersand...just hold the 7 and reach for the shift key... &%$#$ FUCK! The little bastard just BIT ME! I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct - those non-alphanumerics ARE hostile.

_delirium 15y ago
The services/apps are often hostile to it, in my experience. For a while I had a mental password-generation scheme that involved commas, and about 50% of websites would reject my password for having an illegal character, sometimes explicitly, other times just breaking in weird ways. After one site let me set my password to one involving a special character, but wouldn't let me enter that same password on the login form, I became wary of using special characters in passwords. (The site was a bank, not some random forum.)
- mkjones 15y ago
  Nah, they have a great reason - if they restrict you to alphanumeric characters, it's easier to prevent XSS when they display your password back to you later on in the flow :-).
- falcolas 15y ago
  My favorite is when I pick a 20 character password (keypass, ahoy!), and register using that. Works great, until I try and log in, whereupon I realize they silently cut off n characters from the end of the password when saving it on the backend. Heck, at one place, n was 12. Go figure.
dangrossman 15y ago
There's no shift key on my game controllers.
- kmfrk 15y ago
  R2 comes close, though.
dave1010uk 15y ago
Some systems restrict you to alphanumeric passwords (generally for no good reason). If you reuse your password across systems (or you have a formula for creating passwords) then you are less likely to use special characters in case 1 system requires a different one. Additionally, entering symbols on a phone keypad or touch screen is usually a little harder.
chriserin 15y ago
& is physically more difficult to type than U because of the hand stretch from holding the shift key. Not everybody has the same size hands :). While typing letters is easy, special chars are more awkward just because of where they are on the keyboard.

by alexqgb 15y ago

_delirium 15y ago

The services/apps are often hostile to it, in my experience. For a while I had a mental password-generation scheme that involved commas, and about 50% of websites would reject my password for having an illegal character, sometimes explicitly, other times just breaking in weird ways. After one site let me set my password to one involving a special character, but wouldn't let me enter that same password on the login form, I became wary of using special characters in passwords. (The site was a bank, not some random forum.)

mkjones 15y ago
Nah, they have a great reason - if they restrict you to alphanumeric characters, it's easier to prevent XSS when they display your password back to you later on in the flow :-).
falcolas 15y ago
My favorite is when I pick a 20 character password (keypass, ahoy!), and register using that. Works great, until I try and log in, whereupon I realize they silently cut off n characters from the end of the password when saving it on the backend. Heck, at one place, n was 12. Go figure.

dangrossman 15y ago

There's no shift key on my game controllers.

kmfrk 15y ago
R2 comes close, though.

dave1010uk 15y ago

Some systems restrict you to alphanumeric passwords (generally for no good reason). If you reuse your password across systems (or you have a formula for creating passwords) then you are less likely to use special characters in case 1 system requires a different one. Additionally, entering symbols on a phone keypad or touch screen is usually a little harder.

chriserin 15y ago

& is physically more difficult to type than U because of the hand stretch from holding the shift key. Not everybody has the same size hands :). While typing letters is easy, special chars are more awkward just because of where they are on the keyboard.