Unfortunately a lot of jobs require passwords and they use outdated security processes, forcing people to have the old fashioned “must have uppercase, lowercase, number, and special character & you have to change it every 3 months for no reason” passwords instead of the stronger (and less annoying) alternatives.
i signed up at mba.com and it wouldn’t let me use a password because it contained a semicolon which wasn’t on the approved list of special characters, and then - get this - because I tried too many times to create a password - locked me out because I had “too many failed attempts”
Those requirements drive me crazy, especially because they’re all against NIST recommendations. Someone thinks they make passwords more secure but they have the opposite effect.
At any rate, password managers still help in those cases. If nothing else, for providing a safe place to record what your password is for when you forget it because of the dumb requirements.
I always wonder if such choices come from incompetent IT, or if IT wants to do things better but is banging their heads against corporate owners who think “more hassle = more secure”.
It’s almost certainly that writing security standards for an organization takes time and needs approval from high up. And someone high up complaining that they only just revised them to include special characters.
Still frustrating. I generally try to make my passwords all lowercase in case I need to type them (especially on a phone). But a lot of places don’t allow that.
If I’m typing on a computer keyboard, typing words is easier than random letters, but on a phone it doesn’t make much of a difference. What I end up doing is typing my passphrase into my password manager on the computer, and then typing the password on there into my phone.
I do have a password manager app for my phone, but then I have to type the whole passphrase into it so I don’t use it unless necessary.
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Unfortunately a lot of jobs require passwords and they use outdated security processes, forcing people to have the old fashioned “must have uppercase, lowercase, number, and special character & you have to change it every 3 months for no reason” passwords instead of the stronger (and less annoying) alternatives.
i signed up at mba.com and it wouldn’t let me use a password because it contained a semicolon which wasn’t on the approved list of special characters, and then - get this - because I tried too many times to create a password - locked me out because I had “too many failed attempts”
Sounds like it’s prime time for a SQL-injection
Those requirements drive me crazy, especially because they’re all against NIST recommendations. Someone thinks they make passwords more secure but they have the opposite effect.
At any rate, password managers still help in those cases. If nothing else, for providing a safe place to record what your password is for when you forget it because of the dumb requirements.
I always wonder if such choices come from incompetent IT, or if IT wants to do things better but is banging their heads against corporate owners who think “more hassle = more secure”.
It’s almost certainly that writing security standards for an organization takes time and needs approval from high up. And someone high up complaining that they only just revised them to include special characters.
that’s exactly why a password manager works. there’s a generator that you can configure to meet requirements
Must be changed every month, can’t use a previous password, AND, for some fucking reason, can only contain 8 characters.
And if you forgot your password, you can call IT and they’ll just read it to you because they have them all saved somewhere.
That was a great place to work at.
Still frustrating. I generally try to make my passwords all lowercase in case I need to type them (especially on a phone). But a lot of places don’t allow that.
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If I’m typing on a computer keyboard, typing words is easier than random letters, but on a phone it doesn’t make much of a difference. What I end up doing is typing my passphrase into my password manager on the computer, and then typing the password on there into my phone.
I do have a password manager app for my phone, but then I have to type the whole passphrase into it so I don’t use it unless necessary.