Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Passwords - Humor and a gripe

I picked this up from Stephen Abram (always has good "stuff"). It is about choosing a password. He picked it up from newsbiscuit.com which seems to be like the Onion, but British.

Their humorous post begins "Popular pet names Rover, Cheryl and Kate could be a thing of the past. Banks are now advising parents to think carefully before naming their child’s first pet. For security reasons, the chosen name should have at least eight characters, a capital letter and a digit."

Which gets to my gripe. It is a two part gripe. First is about passwords. If you are going to let me choose a password, let me choos it! Yes, tell me if it is strong or not, but don't require things like at least one capital letter, one special character, and one number ... and if you do, tell me BEFORE I try to create it the first time! My second gripe is this: If you want me to use my email to identify my account, DO NOT CALL IT A "USERNAME"!! A "username" is just that. The name of the user, and one which I can choose. (With an unusual last name, I don't have too much trouble getting what I want.) If you want me to use my email address, TELL ME THAT!!

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now!