Your next stop ... the Password Zone

like the last 'tank?

reminds me of the shark tank where the password could only contain one number, and the user wanted "22" in her pw. She informed support that "twenty-two is only one number."

or when a special character was required in the password. user informed fish that "9 is a special character - that's how old my daughter is."

http://ikilldeer.mybrute.com

Back door blues

I worked at a shop with a 60 day expiry policy. One friend had to log into our new application about every three weeks, and was constantly forgetting his password to this app. Rather than calling the help desk and waiting an hour or more for the ticket to get processed, he would call his old friend to change it for him. He always promised to remember his new one (the reset password was always expired, forcing him to create a new one when he logged in.)

After several months of this, I decided it was time he "man up" and take charge of his own passwords. So I reset it to something other than the standard "welcome" (so now you know which application). When I gave it to him, he asked, "Why that?" and I replied, "Think about it!"

I reset had his password to..."Richard_Head".

:-D

CAPTCHA: stiffens contributions--I refuse to go there; who comes up with this stuff?

We recently had a virus that locked out people

We recently had a virus in a student lab that tried to crack AD passwords, so i locked out people who had never forgotten their passwords or been locked out before.

The poor people at the beginning of the alphabet got locked out every day for a few days until the network guys found the source of the problem.

It could have gone like this

'I'm going to reset your password to your last name, with the first letter capitalized.'

'Wait a minute. Let me get a pencil and paper to write that down. That's Y, o, u, r, space, l, a, .....'

Users can change

We have a small group of "special" users (5-8 or so)out of approximately 200 who would routinely forget their passwords and lock up their accounts. One time while resetting one of these "special" users passwords she asks that this must happen all the time to almost everyone. I said no there are only a certain few who do this regularly and you are one of them. Interesting enough since then she has not locked up her accounts once. I guess when they realize how stupid they must look they can actually change.

Let me make this perfectly clear

I once worked in a shop that did this. When the help desk resets a user's password he has to change it when he first signs on. I had a user who called me because I was providing tech support and he said the help desk couldn't help him. When his password was changed and he signed back on the first screen he saw was the screen to change his password. The screen said 'New password' and the next line said 'Verify password'. The user said he didn't know what his new password was because the help desk couldn't gave it to him.

i really don't mind

I have no problem unlocking accounts or resetting passwords for even our most frequent offenders. What does irk me are the unsolicited excuses that come along with the unlock\reset requests. I know you may feel a bit sheepish about locking yourself out but I don't need to know that you somehow reconcile that act with your cat's hairball problem.

CAPTCHA = firefly thority -- leads to the butterfly effect

Today's Limerick

Password update requests come a-floodin’,
So I thought of this all-of-a-sudden:
Would I be better heard
When I gave them their word
If I spoke to them like Allen Ludden?