5 ms·

I don't understand what problem this solves. Can anyone explain?

• jawns 15y ago
  When you enter your password in a password field, the characters are obscured, making it harder to tell when you've made a typo. So, if your password is "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" and you accidentally type in "Humpty Dumpty sat on a ball" you would immediately realize your mistake, because the password's color signature would be different than what you're used to seeing.
  • jawns 15y ago
    Of course, my preferred solution to this problem is to allow the user to toggle the password field, so that they can view the unobscured text if they wish.
    • ColdAsIce 15y ago
      And anybody behind them as well.
    • city41 15y ago
      That would require the user to be quite vigilante when they are entering a password on a website. Getting up to go to the bathroom could mean someone steals their password.
      • qntm 15y ago
        Getting up to go to the bathroom between typing in the password and hitting Enter?
        • burgerbrain 15y ago
          What if you hit the back button until their browser goes back to the login page, likely with the form still filled out?
          • alexmuller 15y ago
            Tested Firefox and Chrome, they both clear the password field but leave the username. I'd be interested to hear if there is a browser that leaves the password field intact.
            • burgerbrain 15y ago
              My comment is in response to the discussion about this: "Of course, my preferred solution to this problem is to allow the user to toggle the password field, so that they can view the unobscured text if they wish" I am assuming that if the password field is being toggled, that it is not actually a password field but rather a regular text field with some javascript stuff messing around to hide the text. That would probably function just like a username field. I'm not really a web developer though, so it is possible my analysis isn't correct.
              • alexmuller 15y ago
                I tested using the login form on huffduffer.com, which does exactly that.
                • burgerbrain 15y ago
                  Ah, fair enough. It seems you can make a password field display the password after all.
        • simonbrown 15y ago
          Someone could just use the dev tools to change the password field into an input field.
• mkopinsky 15y ago
  Between stupid complexity requirements and "you can't repeat that password", I end up with "password" on one site, "Password1" on another, and "Password1!" on yet another. (Obviously I don't use "password" but a secure passphrase that I only use on less-secure sites.) I don't remember which site has password, but I could potentially remember that site X was Green-Blue-Magenta, and correct accordingly.
  • brador 15y ago
    I just signed up to a fresh stackoverflow account and got this "passwords must contain lowercase, uppercase and a punctuation mark" BS. It's the only site in the last 2 years+ that I've signed up with that has historic requirement. I prefer the >12 character simple password to the random digit type and I'd have expected better from a site devoted to technical experts as Stackoverflow is.
    • m3koval 15y ago
      I hate requirements like that. My hunch is that they the SE team hasn't put a ton of thought into the account creation process because they also support OpenID. I didn't even realize that you could login to StackOverflow without using OpenID!
    • ohgodthecat 15y ago
      Just write complete sentences if you're doing your password remembering, they will easily fit all requirements and are quite easy to remember. You only have to worry about character limits and no spaces requirements that some sites have (which are a billion times more annoying to me than requiring certain types of characters). Dumb examples: The cat in the hat. The cow goes moo. My favorite number is 3.
  • drucken 15y ago
    I recommend learning to use a password manager to automate creation of secure passwords and controlled by a single passphrase. 1. A good password manager can run or be made to run on many platforms, including mobiles and flash devices. 2. If you happen to use a single password frequently, then you should not forget it anyway regardless of whether you or a computer made it. 3. With throw-away/automated passwords for every site/usage, you can be more confident in allowing passwords to be saved for convenience in application password databases, e.g. browsers. 4. A good password manager should allow generating passwords based on common patterns which can be customized per site. Therefore, you become almost completely indifferent to the bizarre rules that some sites may require (since you only have to flick a few checkboxes once). 5. Password managers can easily measure and show you the entropy for your password. A good one to use is Keepass though there are other competitive ones.