What’s the deal with insignificant websites requiring absurdly complex passwords? Our water and power company, National Water & Power, requires my login password to “contain characters from at least three of the following four classes: lowercase letter, uppercase letter, number, and a special character.” The password for my bank account isn’t anywhere near that secure–it’s my social security number and then a 4 digit number–and my bank account is actually important!
Are they afraid someone is going to log into my account and pay my water bill? *gasp* Because I seriously wouldn’t mind. Consequently I’m sitting here waiting for their email so I can reset by password. And now it appears their website is down. Quality.
Word. I just signed up for a trial account at NCSoft (they make MMORPGs) and they required an 8-character password with letters and numbers. We’ll see if I can ever log in again…
Even though you’re annoyed, it’s still hard to take in the “annoyed” part becuase there is a blue water droplet smiling at me so cheerfully!
With this information I’ll be able to crack your password in . . . 37 years. Be afraid.
Passwords
Perhaps you need to find a new bank.
Passwords are way too easy to obtain via key loggers and crap to have your SSN as part of it. If someone manages to hack your system, NOW they have the last 4 of your SSN – and yeah, that IS pretty useful. You are under estimating the dangers of data accumulation. That is, when I get 4 or 5 insignificant bits of information on you and put it together..and viola I have much more information than you want me to have.
And of course, how pissed off do you get when your information is lost or stolen? Everyone wants to log in easily AND they want their information super secure. Now, I’m not saying that’s not a bit overboard, but at least they are trying to secure your data.
You should be thanking them instead of making an uninformed rant at them. You should see some of the dumbass passwords people will try to use and then get pissed when someone cracks them.
And, gee, does that water company keep any of your previous payment information? Can I log into your account and have it pop up your previous info and then say pay the water company $5,000? Bet you’d wish you had a better password then, aye?
Re: Passwords
Oh I’m sure my bank would let me have a longer PIN. And I have a good feeling I could opt to use something other than my SSN. And I probably should. But I’m not complaining about my bank, in fact I think they do a pretty good job (Bank of America).
“Can I log into your account and have it pop up your previous info and then say pay the water company $5,000? Bet you’d wish you had a better password then, aye?”
Yes, I dread the day I receive a phone call from an unlisted stranger and the voice on the other end of the line says in a hushed voice, “I know you paid $41.62 last month on your water bill.”
I too just had to pay my bill (and found your LJ post) THEN had to remember my password MUST contain an uppercase -_-…also paying by checking account is a hassle, you have to sign up for some other service..
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