If they just showed the password rules on the login page, this would happen 80% less often to me.
It's so annoying to have to discover the rules one rejected attempt at a time. Worse yet: sometimes you just get vague feedback a la "password contains illegal characters". I usually let KeePassXC generate a safe password for me but in that case I then have to manually permutate the different character classes (numbers, letters, spaces, punctuation, etc) until I find the offender. No good.
Password must contain an uppercase letter.
Password must contain a special character.
Not that one.
Not that one either.
Nearly had it there! Too bad you only get 5 attempts. Account locked.
One time i hand to look up what "half width character" even was. Answer lower case
If they just showed the password on the login page, this would happen 100% less often to me.
"Password is already taken by user123"
That's number 1 in how to tell the organisation has really bad password management
Number 2 is getting an email:
Welcome to shittyTech
Your account is successfully created with name "psud", password "T<©"9_Pt#sbw«:r_R }$° Z-"
*Edited to have a password like a sensible modern user would let their password manager set, instead of the XKCD one
I don't minde the email when it continues with "please change the password when you first log in"
"Thank you for changing the password
Your new password is: xxxxx"
that last panel is freaking hilarious
I don't understand what it's communicating. Is he happy? Did he give up on technology, or society altogether?
He's reexamining his life.
Wait. This is starting to sound like it is no longer a user error.
I swear I've had this happen even with password managers, where there's no way it's being typed incorrectly. Some possibilities:
None of which bode well for that company's password handling security.
My electric and gas utility truncates passwords, but lets you type hundreds of chars when setting a new password
To log in, you need to intuit how much of your password they're using, if you enter too many chars it fails like in the op image
excuse me, what?!
Step 1: create a 20 character password, store it in your password manager
Step 2: the account creation process keeps the first 16 characters
Step 3: attempt to log in with the 20 character password, fail.
I found the 16 character maximum in the password rules in their FAQ, so tried the first 16 chars of my password and it worked, so the above must be how it worked
The text boxes shouldn't have a character limit on them for this very reason. If they need to configure a limit they should allow the form to be submitted but return an error telling it's too many characters. Truncating the user's input is really bad for the exact reason you mention.
There's a lot of sites with bad ways of handling credentials. I really hate sites that stop you from pasting in passwords.
My bank used to block pasting, so I used a browser extension version of KeePass to auto type
Luckily they changed that policy when password managers became the main recommended method of handling passwords
So I no longer know my bank password, I saw it once when I accepted what KeePass generated
I hit the truncation thing just yesterday. People seriously have a password input clipped at like 16 characters. A big company too.
I've had that happen a couple of times too. In the most striking example, I was able to log in by typing html escape tags instead of the special characters in the password. ... ... That's a very bad sign for the website security for several obvious reasons.
My company forces me to change the password every 3 months AND I cannot use the last 10. I use a very strong password and this rule is ridiculous. So I just change it 11 times, iterating a number at the end until I can use my last one. Fuck you.
Also correcthorsebatterystaple.
The more convoluted the Password rules are, the more sticky notes with the monthly password are found.
It also normalizes resetting passwords all the time for IT. Like, the help desk can get social engineered into resetting your password for someone else. Even if you use Self-Service Password management, you'll still have callers every day who can't figure out that system.
You get three whole months? We have to change ours monthly. Everyone has passwords written on our laptops.
Microsoft recommends 3 months. Places that follow MS advice will be on 3 months. A few years ago the above was to change every month
Couldn't a password manager generate and remember them for you?
Typically you need your main company password reasonably typeable because you'll be entering it constantly and often in places that don't support password autofill.
Which is also why forcing people to change passwords so often causes more issues than it solves. People just dumb it down until it meets the bare minimum requirements.
Speaking of corporate passwords, a shitty system has the modern windows network support modern passwords, but some important system you need reads the windows network password, but enforces ancient windows password rules, including a length limit of 16 characters
"Your password is incorrect"
"Oooooh..."
Types "incorrect"
Tell me you’ve had a data breach without telling me you’ve had a data breach.
This'll happen if there's been a suspected data breach with poor password encryption or requirements. Gotta be safe and change the algorithm, breaking everyone's existing passwords. But yeah, it is annoying...
I wouldn't have a problem with this if the website just told us there was a breach and we need to change our password. The problem is when they gaslight me about it.
It also happens with the following process:
Oh, I thought it had something to do with password hashes, where websites don't actually know your password, but if the hash is the same, then it assumes that you entered the right PW. At least that's how my non-technical brain understands how it works.
there has never been something so silly and so true
Ouch! Right in the brain!
Accidental capitalization. Your fingers lie to you sometimes.
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
Web of links
