Allow secure passwords!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Websites
A brief rant here…
If you use the Internet much, then you are almost definitely going to encounter passwords. Lots of people use very insecure passwords, like “password01″. But those of us who actually don’t want our identity stolen use more creative ones. Unfortunately, many companies out there seem to have incompetent web-developers.
Here are a couple of examples of sites which could be major opportunities for identity theft if an account gets hacked:
- British Gas — customer login for paying gas/electricity bills — doesn’t allow special characters
- Virgin Media — customer login for broadband, email, personal webspace, and telephone / TV billing — passwords must be 10 characters or less
These are ridiculous. Ask any security expert. Special characters are a major boost to password security, and it is preposterous to limit a person’s ability to use a pass-phrase consisting of multiple words.
Part of me really hopes that the web-developers responsible for these get their identities stolen online and lose all their money. Poetic justice. 
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