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I hate password rules

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Re: I hate password rules

#91
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got up to P@ssW0rd12 at one job.

I was working my way to it, when IT rolled out a new policy of "cannot share more than 2 consecutive characters with a previous password" or something like it, included in an email along the lines of "an audit has found this new policy applies to you". Dicks.

And that's how you ensure everyone writes their password on a sticky note.

Re: I hate password rules

#92

Due to the nature of my job and the age of some of my coworkers, I am sometimes casually given passwords on a piece of paper. Out of a sample size of conservatively 20, I have never even once (!) seen a special character other than !. It just doesn't happen. Password rules and a requirement to change your password every X months are pure security mirage and just create frustration in people who often struggle to gene…

Requirements for uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters mean I stick an "A1!" at the end of my otherwise strong and memorable password. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Yeah, at least there's a good work-around for the numbers/symbols requirement. What's more annoying is when sites have a low maximum length so you _have_ to use special characters to get good entropy, or when they have other bizarre requirements like "can't contain more than 3 of the same character".

Re: I hate password rules

#93
post #48
post #30

There does need to be some rules or else people would set their password to be blank or a few characters. I would be happy with consistent password rules. 1. No password that was included in a breach a la the “haveibeenpwned” hash check system[0]. 2. No password reuse. 3. A Minimum length. Something like 14-20 characters. And no maximum (or at least something set to at least 127 characters as the max allowed). 4. Res…

> 4. Reset no more than once a year. That would make a lot of people's life terrible. I reset my passwords very frequently (almost every time I log out of a website)

That seems..excessive. What is your motivation for that?

Re: I hate password rules

#94
post #30

There does need to be some rules or else people would set their password to be blank or a few characters. I would be happy with consistent password rules. 1. No password that was included in a breach a la the “haveibeenpwned” hash check system[0]. 2. No password reuse. 3. A Minimum length. Something like 14-20 characters. And no maximum (or at least something set to at least 127 characters as the max allowed). 4. Res…

> 1. No password that was included in a breach a la the “haveibeenpwned” hash check system[0].

Now imagine that in some years every password below 20 characters has been in some breach on haveibeenpwned and now every user of every system needs a new password that is 21+ characters. Some period of time will occur wherein everyone will upgrade rinse and repeat.

> No requirements for special characters or not, just long well randomized passwords, or more aptly, passphrases.

I get your point, but these are incompatible thoughts: well-randomized requires certain levels of variation or it isn't well-randomized.

Re: I hate password rules

#95

Worse than password rules, are when sites disable the ability to paste in the password in the 'confirm your password' field. Forces users to reduce the 50 chars crazy password they wanted to set using their preferred password manager with a less secure version.

Besides the browser extensions/addons mentioned above (that sometimes either don't work for me or gets disabled on my machine) I also use/used to use xdotool (on Linux). You can do: `sleep 3 ; xdotool type "yourpassword here"` and then navigate to the field you want to have it typed into.

Re: I hate password rules

#96

Worse than password rules, are when sites disable the ability to paste in the password in the 'confirm your password' field. Forces users to reduce the 50 chars crazy password they wanted to set using their preferred password manager with a less secure version.

Far too many sites seem to do this with bank account numbers, where you can't paste into the account number OR the confirmation field.

Now I need to drag my tab to another window and type it out (twice) and then read and confirm it. If I'm on mobile - forget it.

I'm far more likely to get my account number _and_ confirmation wrong if I type them rather than copy/pasting them in from my bank's site.

Re: I hate password rules

#97
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was working my way to it, when IT rolled out a new policy of "cannot share more than 2 consecutive characters with a previous password" or something like it, included in an email along the lines of "an audit has found this new policy applies to you". Dicks.

And that's how you ensure everyone writes their password on a sticky note.

Eh, a sticky note is pretty darn secure for the kinds of attacks you care about. If your attack vector is someone breaking into your office the security game changes completely.

Re: I hate password rules

#98

My frustration isn't just the sites that make the password rules clear after I submit the form. The worst sites are the ones that truncate my generated password to fit their maximum password length and then don't tell me (which seems to happen in more places than it should).

Exactly. Indian Retirement Fund, PF, National Pension System, has a rule of max 16 chara in password. They don't tell this at password reset or set. They simply accept anything 16+ length; & silently truncate & use the first 16 chars. But user is never told. When I try to login later, it says password wrong. I had to reset it multiple times, because my password manager was generating longer ones.

Re: I hate password rules

#99
Password rules that make me turn off options on my password generator frustrate me to no end. It just happened on a bank site. I had to turn off special characters so they would accept the password.
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