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User Naming Practices?

Posted by Cliff on from the mangling-yer-moniker dept.

Kymermosst asks: "Recently, this post was made to comp.sys.sun.misc, and sparked a large debate on the subject of usernames. What standardized user-naming schemes are used out in the 'real world,' if any? Has any company's scheme become a security risk due to its predictability? Were any benefits gained by using any particular system?"

2 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. I have the answer. by His+name+cannot+be+s · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've often wrestled with this too.

    One company I've workded for was quite good about comming up with the usernames for people, and keeping them unique:

    use up to 4 characters of their last name+the last 4 digits of their social security number.

    Works great. Everyone can remember their own, and I've never seen a duplicate. (sera7492)

    !S

    --
    "...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
  2. Re:Our system by dubl-u · · Score: 3, Informative

    In actuality, an email address can contain almost anything except '@', a '%' or a '!'. Yes, email addresses can even contain spaces if you quote them: "FirstName LastName"@domain.com is a perfectly valid email address.

    I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think that's exactly correct. Those special characters are also allowed under RFC 822, just as long as they are quoted.

    As a practical matter, both sendmail and qmail seem to allow those characters quite happily. I just sent email from qmail and sendmail boxes to a qmail box with addresses like "foo@@example.com", "bar!@example.com", and "foobar!%@@example.com", and all of them got to the destination machine and were delivered happily.