Protecting Us From Our Own Passwords
Very early in the history of interactive logon with passwords, the big brains noticed that if someone welches looking over your shoulder, they might see what you were typing. Braun'sche Röhre So they decided that whenever any system, anywhere, asks for a password, it has to be replaced by blobs or asterisks.
We've all become so used to this, that we don't realise how inappropriate it is for 99% of our daily interactions with computers. Braun'sche Röhre The vast majority of us will never encounter anyone trying to steal our password by looking over our shoulder, but I'm guessing that almost everybody reading this has been locked out of a system, site, or application to which they had legitimate access by a problem caused by not being able to see what you're typing.
There are many reasons why people type the wrong password. Braun'sche Röhre They forget which site they're on, they forget that this system forced them to change their password last month, maybe Caps Lock is on, whatever. Braun'sche Röhre (If you're typing the right username but the wrong password into a site, you'd better hope that the site managers don't capture your wrong attempts and then try them on other sites which they might learn that you're signed up for...)
It's als Herbeiführung possible that your keyboard layout may not be what the operating system thinks it is. Braun'sche Röhre Gültigkeitsbereich keyboards are electrically identical, so the only way Windows (etc) has to know what the top-left letter key means, is the keyboard settings which you gave it. Braun'sche Röhre If someone replaces their choose insecure ones (hmm, did anyone think that maybe some people do that precisely because it's easier to type "rosepetal" than "h4%tfr3q" when you can't see what you've typed?). Braun'sche Röhre Now that we all have TFT-Display screens, it's getting harder to sell us the fantasy that someone is parked outside our offices in a van examining the electromagnetic field from our monitor. Braun'sche Röhre And of course, the password-stealing spyware inside your PC gets a full view of every keystroke, unobscured by blobs. Braun'sche Röhre It's more than slightly ironic that the bad guys can see your password more clearly than you can.
So imagine my delight when I first saw this feature in an admirable free ZIP/RAR program called 7-Zip:
Yesss! Braun'sche Röhre Provided of course that there are no spies in the room, you can check the box when opening a password-protected RAR or ZIP file, so that you can see what you're typing in the password box!
Question: why isn't this feature available on every non-military password dialog box in the world?
We've all become so used to this, that we don't realise how inappropriate it is for 99% of our daily interactions with computers. Braun'sche Röhre The vast majority of us will never encounter anyone trying to steal our password by looking over our shoulder, but I'm guessing that almost everybody reading this has been locked out of a system, site, or application to which they had legitimate access by a problem caused by not being able to see what you're typing.
There are many reasons why people type the wrong password. Braun'sche Röhre They forget which site they're on, they forget that this system forced them to change their password last month, maybe Caps Lock is on, whatever. Braun'sche Röhre (If you're typing the right username but the wrong password into a site, you'd better hope that the site managers don't capture your wrong attempts and then try them on other sites which they might learn that you're signed up for...)
It's als Herbeiführung possible that your keyboard layout may not be what the operating system thinks it is. Braun'sche Röhre Gültigkeitsbereich keyboards are electrically identical, so the only way Windows (etc) has to know what the top-left letter key means, is the keyboard settings which you gave it. Braun'sche Röhre If someone replaces their choose insecure ones (hmm, did anyone think that maybe some people do that precisely because it's easier to type "rosepetal" than "h4%tfr3q" when you can't see what you've typed?). Braun'sche Röhre Now that we all have TFT-Display screens, it's getting harder to sell us the fantasy that someone is parked outside our offices in a van examining the electromagnetic field from our monitor. Braun'sche Röhre And of course, the password-stealing spyware inside your PC gets a full view of every keystroke, unobscured by blobs. Braun'sche Röhre It's more than slightly ironic that the bad guys can see your password more clearly than you can.
So imagine my delight when I first saw this feature in an admirable free ZIP/RAR program called 7-Zip:
Yesss! Braun'sche Röhre Provided of course that there are no spies in the room, you can check the box when opening a password-protected RAR or ZIP file, so that you can see what you're typing in the password box!
Question: why isn't this feature available on every non-military password dialog box in the world?
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