Slashdot Mirror
Giving Up Passwords For Chocolate
RonnyJ writes "The BBC is reporting that, according to a recent survey, more than 70% of people would willingly give up their computer password in exchange for as little as a bar of chocolate. Over a third of the people surveyed even gave out their password without having to be bribed, and most indicated that they were fed up with having to use passwords."
Yes, I am that desperate.
My users do that all the time, if I am to believe that all those candies sitting in urns on desks serve a purpose! And to think my wife works at Nestle! JB
One bag of pork rinds, and I'll give complete superuser access to anybody!
Punk: Okay, you say you can't get the NVidia card to work in Red Hat. Let's go to the NVidia site and download--
Dude: My root password is money45!
Punk: [dope smack] NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!
Even back in the days I did call support for an ISP, sometimes I'd just ask their login name and they'd just blurt out, "My login is sueray22 and my password is newyork!"
It's YERAWANKER. Now where's my chocolate?
Oh, wait. You wanted my REAL password? Well, that'll cost you another chocolate bar. Of course I'll give you my real password this time. Would I lie to you?
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
maybe their choices on the poll were as bad as Slashdot Polls.
Was give it up for CowboyNeal an option?
in the growing body of evidence to support my thesis that most people
really dont give a crap about anything past their next meal.
And I thought it was because we dont go outside. ;-)
> Management and business types, and of course home users,
:-)
> don't think security is a big complex model. They think
> "oh, we have a firewall... we're safe" and that's the end of it.
I am a management type, you insensitive clod
John.
Assign people passwords rather than let them choose their own. Make them easy to remember phrases like:
"Fuck off you mother fucking fuck fucker"
Then see if they'll spurt them out to people on the street.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
PC.......$600
DSL......$20/month
nmap.....free.
Being pipped to the post by a reporter with a snickers bar.....Priceless.
There are some things even money can't buy, for everything else there's Masterfoods, Plc.
I'd only give up my password for dark chocolate.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
Me! Me! My root password is "changeme".
Please mail the checque to
1A Merz St
Liverpool
This study brought to you by Klondike. What would you do for a Klondike bar?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Kinda useless, if you ask me. I prefer to have 3-5 different passwords and use post-its attached to my monitor.
you realise that such a deal will ensure your getting rooted twice?
The second one might not be so pleasant.
Still, it's probably better than being an OpenBSD hacker and having never been rooted at all.
(and please don't mod up the karma whore who follows this going "don't stereotype geeks waa waa waa" it's a joke...laugh)
Occasionally you may HAVE to tell someone your password. Keep that in mind selecting one. Consider this exchange I had with one of my users a while back:
..." *blush* "Do I have to?"
... it's ... TPBP6969. It's my initials followed by my husband's initials. Please don't tell anyone!"
... personal password."
Bryan: "What's your password on this system?"
Tammy: "Uh
Bryan: "No, you can always call the help desk like you're supposed to, but I can't reset your password on this system."
Tammy: "Um
Bryan: "Considering your husband and I have the same initials I think I'll keep that one to myself. But in the future you might want to select a less
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Why do you find this surprising? I know most of you don't know what a woman is, but do you know how badly they crave chocolate? If you learn this simple fact, the world will be come your oyster, so to speak. Now get ye gone and lose that virginity!
Any help will be gratefully recieved and results will be shared with all. Oh boy will they be shared........
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
I used to have my password as a pattern typed on the keypad. The password, as far as I was concerned, was a pattern on the keyboard, not a number.
But... I tried to use the same thing on an ATM machine for typing in my PIN number, but the keypads aren't the same... so I had to go in to the bank and explain my mistake... oops.
789
456
123
Keyboard
123
456
789
ATM machine
I gave my slashdot login/passwd away ages ago, and my karma's only gone up.
Those who would give up security for chocolate deserve neither.
Unknown host pong.
A friend of mine is particularly anal when it comes to security. He's a network security geek for a major college in the Boston area, and security is his life. Unfortunately, he'll interact with you when he's just entered Level 1 REM sleep.
About 7 years ago, he was crashed out on the floor of my apartment after a late night session. Since I was still coherent, I started saying random command prompts and command lines to him. He had just fallen asleep, and was finishing the prompts!
Me: rm -rf
Him: star
Me: apachectl
Him: restart
Me: shutdown
Him: -h now
And then I upped the stakes.
Me: username
Him: blurted out his username
Me: password
Him: blurted out his password
I left him an e-mail from himself that evening, and then went to bed. The next morning, he said "cute trick, but anyone can forge the From: header". I told him to go and double-check the received line, and he'd see that it was sent from localhost on a server that I didn't have an account on.
He was rather annoyed and amused at the same time...
Priceless.
PepperHacks - Hacking the Pepper Pad
"what would you do for a klondike bar"
*shakes head in shame*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Chocolate stocks worldwide surged due to heavy buying form a someone knoew only as "3l33t hax0r"
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
yeah - but honestly, I'd give up my Windows password for a beer if you're buying...
:P
oh, crap, I just remembered, Windows XP defaults to admin users having no passwords - I guess I have to turn that feature on first
(thankfully that box sits behind a Linux router firewall)
This survey didn't prove people treat passwords as unimportant. It proved chocolate is more important than passwords! Get your priorities straight.
If it was just documents of my work? who cares? My co-workers NEED to see those documents anyway!
What does my password protect? Private files? Am I supposed to have private files at work? I guess not. Secrit files then? Ok. possibly.
To track possible abuse? They're allowed to use my phone too, do I have to password-protect that too?
But hey, if it's about my admin password..
That's a different story.
Then I'd like to have some chocolate too!
Privacy is terrorism.
Remembering passwords is easy. I have lots of them.
yes for me too! for example - my name is Rick, so my password is rICK. or RiCk or rick.
it is very easy to remember, and, when someone asks me for my password, I just tell em what it is! I dont have to put it on a piece of paper or nothing.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Folks just have SO many web sites that use different passwords, and to make it worse, most of the sites don't have the same username.
;) (that's a joke)
That's why we need to exclusively use Microsoft Passport and let the Microsoft Security team handle all our logins....
my password is **********
True, but does turning a key force you to remember a complex stored memory? Nope.
Finding my keys does...
I just changed all my passwords to 'passwordsafe'. They seem to work just as well as all those hard-to-remember passwords I had before. That is what you meant, isn't it?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
How do they know this doesn't just show people are dirty lying bastards. I'd give up a random string of charachters I made up on the spot for a bar of chocolate!
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Most system administrator would wish that they had a company policy which allowed them to break the fingers of users who share their passwords that doesnt encourage password sharing or anything... "hey mike, my fingers are broken, can you type in my password for me?"
and not chocolates when I enter my root password to login on websites such as Slashdot?
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
All this by showing half an interest and sounding like you know what you're talking about. But then, maybe the IT department here is useless.
Dude, show competance like that and you'll be drafted into the IT department and then you'll really be sorry.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is a bit off-topic, but a friend of mine had an account at a bank that would only allow you to access your information if you could answer a particular question. You could set the question and answer to whatever you wanted. His question was:
"What are you wearing?"
His response?
"I don't think that's an appropriate question."
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Funny I have 4 passwords
Low security Internet (slashdot/monster/..etc..)
one for home (12 random key strokes)
one for finance (another 12 random key strokes)
and one for work....my onw for work is "password"
any one care to guess how much I like my job?
--meh--
At my wife's place of work (she's a research scientist for a major university) IT will delete the old passwords, then send out an email informing the employees that their passwords are no longer good and that they need to be changed.
Of course, to read your email, much less change your password, you need to log in. And you can no longer log in because your password has been deleted. Therefore, no one ever receives the email that their passwords need to be changed, nor could they do anything about it even if informed. Eventually enough people call up IT to ask them what the hell is going on, prompting them to restore the old passwords long enough for everyone to get on, read their mail, and change their password.
The IT department at her university has pulled this idiocy more than once. In fact, one time they restored the old passwords, everyone dutifully changed them, and then IT deleted the new passwords!
If ever there was an IT department where it was a requirement to have the word "LOSER" stenciled on one's forehead, this one takes the cake.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?