Slashdot Mirror
Teens Share Passwords As a Form of Intimacy
nonprofiteer writes "The New York Times claims that the hot new trend among teenagers in love is to share passwords to their email and Facebook accounts, as the ultimate form of trust. According to Pew, 33% of teens surveyed say they do this. One expert says the pressure to share passwords is akin to the pressure to have sex. Forbes says don't do it! 'There is something pure and romantic about the idea of sharing everything, and having no secrets from one another. But it's romantic the same way that Romeo and Juliet is romantic, in a tragic, horrible, everyone-is-miserable-and-dies-at-the-end kind of way.' Sam Biddle at Gizmodo writes about which passwords are okay to share (like Netflix), but says to stay away from handing over email or Facebook passwords. 'We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.'"
You're just a jealous bitch, mom! You don't understand that Daniel and me are going to last FOREVER!! I HATE YOU!!! I HATE YOU!!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wait, it's okay to share your Netflix password...?
I can think of at least three reasons why that's a bad idea.
Not sure why this is news. There's a reason your record is expunged when you turn 18. Perhaps the same should apply to online accounts.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Plus it's usually a thundering Terms of Service violation.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
XKCD covered this years ago http://xkcd.com/215/
And vice versa. He's a number guy, I'm a language person. So his passwords are long strings of numbers, and mine are long strings of words and symbols.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
My password is the same as my luggage combination.
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
I remember countless moronic dramas of high school kids claiming that their MySpace had been "hacked". By which they mean, they'd shared the password with all their friends and acquaintances... and one of their 50 odd fellow schoolmates changed their profile and changed their password.
Surely, though, this should really be a prompt for people to have more intelligent permissions systems for web services. We handle shared bank accounts just fine, so why haven't websites and other online services come up with family accounts, sub-accounts and so on other than as an 'enterprise' feature? Proper security starts at home.
I'd much rather my kids be having sex than sharing passwords.
Remember kiddies, using your ex-boyfriend's social networking password can be a felony!
Heck, even using your current boyfriend's passwords with his permission may be a felony in certain circumstances, especially if a financial transaction, medical-history-information, or intentional deception of anyone is involved.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And in other news...divorce continues skyrocketing,
Seriously kids, realize that your significant other can lock you out of your own accounts on breakup, and you can't recover everything via your phone #, pretty sure like... netflix, email providers that aren't google.
'We all need an illusion of whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.'"
Because we sure as hell don't have any privacy left anymore.
Check your premises.
We will never be able to keep teenagers from sharing passwords with each other. It's hard wired into them. If you try to forbid it then they'll find creative ways to do so secretly.
The best method is to have Password Sharing Education, where you teach them safe practices regarding Password Sharing. We'll have a virus epidemic if we leave it up to chance.
Clearly Forbes is just too conservative and stuck in his ways. Password Sharing abstinence has never worked, and it never will. And why should he impose his morality on everyone else? Teenagers should be free to share their intimacy through Sharing Passwords, as long as they know the risks involved and have a proper perspective on the meaning of the act.
Giving your significant other power over your socialization and friendships on this level just seems like it is going to give even more power to those who abusively control the other partner in their relationships. Not to mention the wonders that will occur if you break up with someone and don't change your password before they upload not-so-flattering pictures and send them to all your friends.
Giving out your password as a demonstration of trust is just silly. I trust my boss with work-related things, but that doesn't mean I give him the passwords to all the servers at work. Why? He doesn't need them. I trust my mom, but I don't give her my bank PIN. Why? She doesn't need it. I trust my girlfriend but I don't give her my gmail password. Why? Because she has no use for it. The difference between strangers and people I trust is that I ~would~ give friends/family secret credentials, if there was a valid need (e.g. I was sick and needed my girlfriend to perform a financial transaction for me). But giving out the details just for fun is illogical, and insecure.
Moreover, it's more a manifestation of a lack of trust. I don't care that I don't know my girlfriend's Facebook password... because I trust her. The only boyfriends/girlfriends who want each other's passwords are those who don't trust each other: they want to check up on what the other one is posting/saying. They don't trust them enough to let them have privacy or private conversations. I've seen this happen (my sister once had a jealous boyfriend who thought she was cheating on him and thus demanded access to her email and Facebook passwords so that he could check for himself... the relationship did not last).
Overall, this whole "if you loved me you'd give me your password" is infantile. The appropriate response is: "If you respected me you wouldn't ask for it."
At least you can change the password... pretty hard to return virginity.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
If the Feds have access to it, you might as well give your girlfriend access. At least that leaves nothing for the Feds to blackmail you with.
It's a serious crime in TN! Don't get caught, lovers!
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
Ayn Rand
Sounds like that woman had a lot of issues. Hope everything worked out for her.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
She wanted to monitor my email and everything. Very nosy. I refused and she bitched about not trusting me. Turns out she was a cheating whore and just assumed that I had to be getting some on the side as well. She needed to verify because she could not trust because she was herself untrustworthy and insecure about it. Sharing passwords does not show trust, it shows lack of trust.
That's kinda silly. If I have a phone conversation in an empty room of a friend's house, then according to you it's not a private communication because I'm having it in a room controlled by someone else, and they could have bugged the room? Or if I write a personal letter in my office at work, it's not private because my employer may have installed a secret monitoring camera?
The fact is that there are social conventions afoot: for example that my friends don't bug their houses and that my employer hasn't installed secret cameras (some of these conventions are in fact backed-up by laws). As such, even though someone ~could~ intercept my communication, it is presumptively private and people who circumvented that would be accused of violating my privacy.
Similarly with networks. It's certainly possible for my friend to keylog their computer, or make copies of all traffic that passes through their router. But most sensible people would assume that this is not happening, and that doing so would be an invasion of the privacy of others.
So, email is private. That doesn't mean it's un-interceptable (neither is postal mail: it's trivial to grab someone else's mail and read it). But those who intercept it are violating privacy. (Of course if privacy is important to you, then you should take extra steps (e.g. encryption). But communications that you target towards a specific person are presumptively private.)
Yes, thanks Forbes. I'm sure all five of your teen readers will heed your sage advice
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Subconsciously you're just refusing to share your password with Slashdot...
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men." Ayn Rand
Ah yes because every man is an island unto himself, no? A tribe does not need privacy because everybody in the tribe depends on each other for survival, you can't depend on those you don't trust, you can't trust those you do not know, you cannot know those who are private.
Civilization only requires privacy because there are far too many people to know meaning you can only trust and depend on very few people. What is more fundamentally human? We evolved to live and survive in tribes not cities, how many feel at place and purposeful in society as compared to those who live in tribes? Do you really feel that Rand was a happy fulfilled person?
We can decry the actions of these teens as stupid, naive and foolish and we would probably be correct, but consider that the things a teenager most desires above all else is autonomy, purpose, and belonging. Sharing is a primal instinct that we instinctually do and emotionally require to feel close and secure to others. Civilization is a cold bitch, and it is hard to feel like an accepted member, much easier with a clique of friends that you wish to share everything with.
I was planning on reading Romeo and Juliet this winter.
Now it looks like I don't have to.
Assholes.
By the way, Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father, and Bruce Willis was dead for the whole movie.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
people who actually have a right and a need to know those information
Whoawhoawhoawhoawhoa. Whoa.
Exactly what the hell are you saying?
Long signatures suck.
I'll go against the grain and say this might be a good thing. Isn't being a teenager about making stupid mistakes and suffering painful lessons while still in a somewhat protected environment? Public humiliation at the hands of a bitter ex will teach you more about online security (and relationships in general) than a hundred lectures.
Ayn Rand was right when she said that eventually, the people who are productive will abandon the masses who rely upon them. Only mistake she made was, it's the capitalists with their silly green tickets who are going to be abandoned.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
My wife and I do this. I keep her passwords on a sheet of paper in the safe. She reads mine before going to bed every night (I believe she's on chapter 2, "Routers and Switches").
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I gave all my passwords to my wife, and I have all hers. Neither of us demanded it; it just made sense.
But the spousal relationship is unique, ethically and legally. I wouldn't normally do that with any other person except as an exception, and I would change passwords afterwards.
but consider that the things a teenager most desires
Why did you give her your password? Boobies and vagina.
At first it seems like a brilliant quote, then you see who said it and realize that it's only brilliant when taken out of the original context :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
we know we know everything.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
My wife manages a teen drop-in center. Oh, the crap I hear about... Anyway, their relationships average about a week, and their definition of "trust" is "stay away from the opposite sex or I will go publicly and aggressively crazy." This illustrates a need for classes about how to avoid codependency and what abuse and manipulation in a relationship looks like. But all the middle and high schools are almost solely focused on studying their students up for the standardized tests, so once again, thank Bush for fucking up society.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You "trusting" your partner with your password because you do not mind sharing what you say is one thing. I'd suggest it's unwise, it's highly prone to misunderstandings and perhaps more an indication of lack of trust than actual trust (where sharing the password wouldn't be necessary). But, that's your prerogative.
But the thing is you're now breaching your trust with the people emailing you. You're sharing what THEY say, and you haven't even had the opportunity to make a judgement first.
Actually I'd say breaching your trust with others is about all you're doing. You know that you have given your partner access, so you're not going to write anything you would not want them to read. But other people emailing you do not necessarily know that, they think their correspondence is private. At an absolute minimum people trust you to use your judgement before you share their information with your partner.
Holy crap teens want to do something to establish intimacy! WHATEVER IT IS IT MUST STOP!!!1!
For realz all of my account password resets point at my email account! Like banking! And billpay! And paypal! And my credit cards! These teens are setting themselves up to ruin their HUGE and HIGHLY INVOLVED financial structures that they don't have.
Whatevs. TFA has no actual criticism other than your messy breakup might be messy. Whoa drama in teen romance LOOK OUT.
If sharing passwords creates the intimacy and allows teens to forgo ACTUALLY DANGEROUS behavior then go for it. Beats the hell out of getting a tattoo. Just change your password when you break up. Before your SO changes it out from under you...
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Sharing email account passwords isn't nearly as big a deal as people here seem to think.
And I find the hostility to the idea of expressing trust and intimacy rather unsettling.
Passwords are, it is said, like underwear.
http://www.umflint.edu/its/units/initiatives/publicity/password.htm
If you are willing to share your underwear with a partner, why not your password?
In my case, I was dating a woman who had been cheated on and had trust issues. I made sure she had access to my email and a tracking location on my phone. She says she never checked up on me, but I hope the gesture was appreciated.
Don't you know that's the best way to get a virus?! You must practice safe hex in your relationship!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Uh... Is it just me, or did they not think of the obvious? While you're together, you share your password. As soon as you break up, log in and change your passwords to something new that you haven't told that person. Problem solved? Was there even a problem?
I know, I know, TFA was more about the "dangers" of letting your significant other know all your secrets. I reject this too, I don't have any secrets. My friends and family can ask anything and I'll give an honest answer. 99% of the problems in this world come from people trying to defend their own ego and self-image, when you should really just accept that you are who you are and that is fine, people make mistakes, and we are each the result of our environments.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I told my wife that my email password was kx8xay2m4knnh9tjgn4f5nzy, but surprisingly, she doesn't feel like it's a proof of trust!