Your password is WHAT?

[klfjoat.livejournal.com]

On PostSecret this past Sunday, there was a secret which read, "I use cuss words for passwords so I can embarrass tech support when I call for help."

There are a few things wrong with this picture.

1. WHY would they be embarrassed by your password?
2. Using cuss words makes you look stupid.
3. What tech support are you calling that asks for your password?

IMO, if you're calling a tech support line that asks for your password, then they should be embarrassed.  But not because of your choice of passwords...

Comments

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I recall a particular user of ours whose wife had changed his password to 'cheater'. That was different.

[wignersfriend.livejournal.com]

That was an awesome story.

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

I remember that story. Pure gold.

[ateji.livejournal.com]

I second the request for a link.

[geeveecatullus.livejournal.com]

Some ISPs where I live demand a customer password when you call them, which can be freely chosen.

[melstav]

Not only ISPs, but some cellular carriers do it, too.

When I do anything with my Sprint account which involves interacting with a drone human, I have to give them a password to validate that I do, in fact, own the account. And no, being in person and showing any number of pieces of photo ID is not sufficient. They need my password.

[areolamay.livejournal.com]

Pee Wee!
LOL

[glitteringlynx.livejournal.com]

Having worked in call centres, either the password shows up automatically on the screen or tech support has ZERO access to the password and can only reset it to a generic code. There may be some exceptions to this, but that's from my personal experience.

So really, it's stupid for a customer to assume they need the password, unless they're asking it for security purposes before talking with you about your account. They probably hear cussing from angry customers all day, aimed directly AT THEM. You using a swear word for your password really won't phase them.

[bitterfun.livejournal.com]

So... what's your password? Just curious.

[klfjoat.livejournal.com]

password -- all lower-case, one word, no numbers, no symbols. hahaha

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

I saw that too, and thought pretty much the same. Also, that that particular person was a complete luser.

[drquuxum.livejournal.com]

I've used cuss words for usernames -- not always my own.

The old Cyrus e-mail system had a feature where you could deliver a message directly to an IMAP user's subfolder using the "+" in their address. I always wished that there were a user "sh1" who was a department chair or something, and they'd have an e-mail address "sh1+head@domain.edu"....

[tadiera.livejournal.com]

When I was in techsupport, we actually purposefully looked up email addresses that had cusswords in them (or other "bad words" that got past the filter or were old enough to be 'grandfathered' in). Just to laugh at them.

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that some students like to use vulgar variable names in programming courses. Presumably they imagine that this impresses or shocks the demonstrators.

[hikari-neko.livejournal.com]

They'll grow up eventually. I mean I end up with scratch variables called "bugger" a lot, but that's because I keep mistyping "buffer".

[jonah.livejournal.com]

When I was in middle school, we had a cranky old hag as our IT person. She locked down all the computers with startup/BIOS passwords, which a teacher would type in if we wanted to use the computers. One password was for booting up, another was for admin. One day a bunch of my friends were hiding out in the computer lab goofing off and trying to guess the passwords... what finally got us in was "FUCKOFF".

[wyldthyng.livejournal.com]

I wondered if someone might comment on that. ~lol~

I don't recall *where* it was, but I remember working somewhere where users weren't allowed to use cusswords as their passwords. We'd make them change it. Ironically just today I talked to a customer whose password began with f---you and had some random jumbling afterwards. I'm assuming she didn't like the pw system much ;)

But yeah, the only person who looks like a dorkwad is the person who CHOSE that password. And in reality, if I wanted to, I could take personal offense and disconnect them. HAH.

[wyldthyng.livejournal.com]

... and yes, it is kinda silly that for this system in particular, I can't access their password.

I can, however, start a whole new account linked to their customer profile if they get snitty about giving it to me. It's a self-serve options website for the cellphone provider I work for.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

I saw that, too, and thought the same thing. Dumb shit.

[moopet.livejournal.com]

I saw that and had exactly the same reaction.

[duality.livejournal.com]

i know that when we were a third party tech support company we had to ask for existing passwords because although we had the power to reset, doing so to something random would break other things we did not have access to.

[klfjoat.livejournal.com]

Then access control (authentication / authorization) was not being performed properly in the organization.

[jecook]

It's a 'best practice': This way, the number of people who know the password can be kept to a minimum.

Besides, Support staff usually don't 'need' the password, as they can reset it, and notify you later that it's been reset to whatever they've changed it to.

There's also the issue of 'why does the it support staff have the password if the CEO written down somewhere?' coming up. (true story, my last company had that. the IT guy has everyone's network passwords stored in the PDA that the company bought him...)

[mashiroikaze.livejournal.com]

My sister once had me look at her computer to figure out what was wrong with it. I quickly sussed out that her son had done the following:
1) Logged into her account and made himself admin
2) Downloaded Limewire again after I deleted it and yelled at him last time
3) Set a password on his account.

So, I did the logical thing...I set a password on his mom's account, deleted Limewire and all the relevant files, dropped his ass back to user class, and changed his password to "youareindeepshit"

Apparently, after I left that night, his mom demanded his password and couldn't get into his account. When I explained why the next day, she was thoroughly amused by my choice in new passwords.

[cyrus7.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I had someone in my department think he needed access to a certain email account that I control, so he reset the password himself (it's nothing more than the same type of account our internet customers use). I discovered this when I couldn't log in. So I reset the password and reminded him he didn't need to be in the account. My choice of password? "k33p0utsh1th3@d"

[azurelunatic]

The company I work for has two "password" things the user sets: one to authenticate themselves within their account, and one to identify them to us when calling in.

The call-in one is a four-digit numeric, and people still do manage to set it to things that could theoretically embarrass a sensitive tech support person who hasn't come close enough to anyone of the appropriate gender to even hug them, let alone 6969. (Speaking of which, don't use that as a PIN.)

But it's scary how many people will try to tell you their password (which I think is the reason for making sure that the PIN is a four-digit numeric only and the password MUST be somewhat longer than that, instead of having something longer as the PIN).

[ateji.livejournal.com]

I once saw a list of passwords (WHY, OH GOD WHY WAS THIS LIST VISIBLE TO ANYONE, LET ALONE ME?!) for an Access database in use at work. A very large majority were expletives.