Re:Stop Password Masking
by CWuestefeld on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @10:26AM
(#670435)
The programmer thinks that security trumps usability. Unfortunately, he's not the one who decides how the security facilities will be used.
Consider systems that require long passwords, and even go as far as to scan them against a dictionary, ensuring that the p/w must be a jumble. Users will always subvert such a hard-to-use system by writing down the password, completely undermining the whole thing.
My netbook doesn't have hard CAPS and NUMLOCK lights, I need to look at the display's status bar to see it. When I log on, the status bar isn't shown. I can't tell if my keyboard is in numeric mode, so I can't tell if I'm typing my password. This frequently becomes very frustrating -- and this isn't hypothetical, it happens to me all the time.
Consider systems that require long passwords, and even go as far as to scan them against a dictionary, ensuring that the p/w must be a jumble. Users will always subvert such a hard-to-use system by writing down the password, completely undermining the whole thing.
My netbook doesn't have hard CAPS and NUMLOCK lights, I need to look at the display's status bar to see it. When I log on, the status bar isn't shown. I can't tell if my keyboard is in numeric mode, so I can't tell if I'm typing my password. This frequently becomes very frustrating -- and this isn't hypothetical, it happens to me all the time.