Stop Password Masking

[irongeek at irongeek.com (Adrian Crenshaw)]

On mobile phones I can see it (and many already do that by flashing the
character you typed for a brief moment beforepbutting up the dot), but for
normal PCs, hell no. Too much chance of shoulder surfing the password. Just
give a warning about caps lock, that's all. How does he claim it does not
increase security? How did he measure that?

Adrian

On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 8:40 AM, Aaron <subdriven at gmail.com> wrote:

> I read an interesting article about removing the mask from passwords.
> For mobile devices I think it would be a great idea. For some
> desktops, I know it would cut down on support calls. In other
> instances I think they must stay masked. I was just wondering what the
> rest of the PDC list thought. I have links to the articles below.
>
> Summary:
> Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback
> they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't
> even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login
> failures.
>
>
> Main article here: (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html)
>
> which was also posted to slashdot here
> (
> http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/25/1856214/Nielsen-Recommends-Not-Masking-Passwords
> )
>
> Regards,
>
> Aaron
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