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Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

support.google.com

21–30 of 278 posts

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably just do two password checks.

Yeah we did it this way on an app I worked on in the past, try the verbatim input and then a couple of minor variations in casing if it didn't work. I've also found that for email fields you need to be careful to normalize the input (trim, casing) as safari had a habit of autocorrecting the first character to be a capital

It’s very nice that you do that!

I find apps that don’t trim the whitespace for the email field so annoying in terms of UX. I usually use a Text Replacement shortcut to fill in my emails (e.g. “gml” fills in my GMail address, “cld” my iCloud address etc.) and that always inserts a space after the email and I have to manually fiddle with the cursor to delete it.

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#22
post #8
post #2

So they hash both versions of the password? Or how does this work?

Sadly it can also mean that they save your password in a form that enables them to read it if they need/want it.

Certainly it’s not definitive though. This could easily be accomplished by storing multiple hashes, or multiple password checks that alter the user input, but still have Google keeping hashed passwords. Definitive example could be something like them doing a password recovery where they send you a plaintext version of your current password.

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#24
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this being the case on Facebook?

It was possible to login with the reverse of your password (as in password.split().reverse().join('')).

What was the reasoning? Unlike case or typos, you wouldn't accidentally type a password backwards.

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#26
post #8
post #2

So they hash both versions of the password? Or how does this work?

Sadly it can also mean that they save your password in a form that enables them to read it if they need/want it.

Sure it can mean that, in the same way that verifying a password at all can mean that.

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#27
post #23
post #2

So they hash both versions of the password? Or how does this work?

I believe they don't hash the password. They can't know the capitalised version of my password unchanged from nearly 17 year ago.

...and if they remove the capital?

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#28
post #23
post #2

So they hash both versions of the password? Or how does this work?

I believe they don't hash the password. They can't know the capitalised version of my password unchanged from nearly 17 year ago.

Of course they hash the password. Of course they don't know the capitalised version of your saved password, but they can know the capitalised version of the password you just entered

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was possible to login with the reverse of your password (as in password.split().reverse().join('')).

What was the reasoning? Unlike case or typos, you wouldn't accidentally type a password backwards.

I could imagine having the left arrow key accidentally pressed (or stuck), but that's pretty niche

Re: Gmail password first character is case insensitive on mobile device

#30
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just normalize the password by making the first character either lower- or uppercase both when checking and setting it.

It would be more complicated to do this once you stored millions of passwords. So now you have to create 2 flows, those before the new policy and those that were set after the normalization.

If your storing millions of passwords surely a version field and an if statement is not going to be a huge concern
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