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[EDIT: I’d only read up to: “So why aren’t these errors better? “Password is incorrect, try again.” or, “No account exists for this email.” Is that so hard?” —
by louthy 1y ago
[EDIT: I’d only read up to: “So why aren’t these errors better? “Password is incorrect, try again.” or, “No account exists for this email.” Is that so hard?” — then I bailed, my bad, I should have kept reading. So my response below isn’t fair]
This ignores the security risks from being too verbose and/or specific with error messages, especially if they’re coming from a server. You’ll usually fail security/pen-test audit.
I agree that doing a better job of helping the user is laudable, but you need to know which battles to fight.
Giving a unique error number that can be referenced by a support team (who could look up the event, look at stack traces, etc.) is the best way to deal with truly exceptional events. Otherwise, if it comes to authentication or authorisation, you have to extremely careful what information you share.
- username923409 1y agoYou should try reading past the first page of the article before making a judgment like that.
- louthy 1y agoWho has time? ;) But fair enough, I had stopped at the point where the advice was bad. My bad. I’ve clarified in my original comment.