[Macworld]

Post your comments for The everyday agony of the password here

[rmossman]

Man, talk about a "space filler" article. It's not like we all haven't had these exact thoughts for the past 60 years. Do you think we've suddenly had a new crop of computer users appear and you need to regurgitate all the complaints that have been aired since the first piece of data was stored?

If you (writers of articles like this) want to do something even the slightest bit effective, start writing letters to your legislators, the FCC, the SEC, and whoever you can think of telling them to stop wasting money on the war on terrorism (an idea) and redirect it to fighting a war on cyber terrorism (a reality).

Make hacking a capital crime. Start putting an equal effort into finding and stopping hackers as they do into hacking itself.

[hayesk]

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Man, talk about a "space filler" article. It's not like we all haven't had these exact thoughts for the past 60 years. Do you think we've suddenly had a new crop of computer users appear

Wow, if only we were all as learned and worldly as you.

No, we never have a new crop of computer users. Young people don't like technology. The youngest computer user is 35 years old!

[kevinv]

If only Apple weren't dying and no longer selling new computers to new users.

BTW, Google and Dropbox support the Google Authenticator app instead of just text messages for 2 factor authentication. Only gets rid of the "deliver text message when it's convienent" issue. and you only need your phone, not a separate little dongle.

Doesn't really fix the issue of it being hard to use, and I needed to generate a bunch of 1 time passwords for my iphone mail connection, and another for ipad connection and another for Postbox on my mac, etc.... Dropbox is worse needing a 1 time password for every app i setup to sync, and i've got way more of those than email programs.

[ebonfyre]

Biometric hand scanners which see through the hand to identify the unique blood vessel structure seems to be the most promising future tech balance in my mind.

[Conrad]

Quote

Man, talk about a "space filler" article. It's not like we all haven't had these exact thoughts for the past 60 years. Do you think we've suddenly had a new crop of computer users appear and you need to regurgitate all the complaints that have been aired since the first piece of data was stored? If you (writers of articles like this) want to do something even the slightest bit effective, start writing letters to your legislators, the FCC, the SEC, and whoever you can think of telling them to stop wasting money on the war on terrorism (an idea) and redirect it to fighting a war on cyber terrorism (a reality). Make hacking a capital crime. Start putting an equal effort into finding and stopping hackers as they do into hacking itself.

What makes you so sure hackers are the problem? What about back doors or the irresponsibility of the user and accountability for their actions? I'm sensitive to the fact that not all users are technies like most of use here, but am some point their needs to be some personal responsibility to learn enough (at least the basics) to protect oneself from most threats.

[Conrad]

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Biometric hand scanners which see through the hand to identify the unique blood vessel structure seems to be the most promising future tech balance in my mind.

Great post....it's true. I was at an Informatics conference not long ago that demo'd this on the vendor floor.

[egis]

I call your attention to a recent article in ArsTechnica

http://arstechnica.c...-valued-assets/

fascinating read on Macs, passwords and FileVault.

egis

[clh126]

To the first poster:Dude. Lighten up a little. I love these articles. They're sort of "conversational," interesting and helpful.

I use 1Password and this article confirms my inclination not to get my non-tech family members to use it.

Thanks for the article!

[TeaEarleGreyHot]

Mr. Mogull, thank you for an excellent article that covers a number of important issues.

rmossman, I would argue that the article is of good value because it raises lingering issues to an appropriate audience. My hope is that if people keep raising the password issue, increasing numbers of IT people (and those who set the silly policies governing passwords) will get a clue: Forcing us to change a complex password every 80 days merely guarantees that we'll write it down on a post-it note, stuck under the keyboard or on the wall. Yes, I have many such notes scattered around my desk. So do each of my colleagues. Because the password demands are truly unbearable. Every computer in the lab has a password key taped to the front of it. You can do all the name-calling you like, but the reality is that 99.9% of people write them down insecurely. And you know what it means when everyone ELSE in the world is wrong about something....

[Martian]

Deleted post to wrong thread.

This post has been edited by Martian: 11 February 2013 - 11:19 AM

[Trubador]

"...but can you image trying to force the method down the throats of millions of users—a large percentage of whom are on AT&T, which loves to play “guess when the text will arrive”?"

LOL. And THAT is why I switched to Verizon. I remember about three years ago, my wife (then, my fiance) was upset that I wasn't responding to her texts in a timely manner. I had just got home from work, trying to explain that I sometimes don't get texts until later in the day. She didn't believe me, until at that moment my phone went off. It was a text from her that she sent four hours earlier. She said, "we need to switch to Verizon." And we did once our AT&T contract ended.

[bastion]

Macworld, on 11 February 2013 - 03:00 AM, said:

And the worst part of it all? There isn’t a single, viable alternative.

The article really should have ended there. The whole thing can be summed up in 5 words: Passwords are a necessary evil.

[samadore]

Fun rant.