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The point hair who shoved the idea down the developers throats probably assumes the only password manager people would ever use is called passwords.xls (because that's what he uses) and is making the system more secure as a result. To @NathanMinier the ctrl+v loophole you found is probably the developers protesting by slipping something past their PHB knowing he can only copy/paste using the context menu. 
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: probably the developers protesting by slipping something past their PHB knowing he can only copy/paste using the context menu
So sad because it is so true.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli
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Was it to keep the bots from being able to paste IDs and passwords?
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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DavidCrow wrote: Was it to keep the bots from being able to paste IDs and passwords?
Bots can just do SendKeys. It's extremely easy.
As a matter of fact, Norton Internet Security has a onscreen keyboard which allows you to type via SendKeys which is a security safety net in case you have a keylogger and dont know it. SendKeys doesn't generate the keypresses that your keyboard does and keyloggers wouldn't be able to trap your password if you use the Norton onscreen keyboard. I think Kaspersky has this too.
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Years ago, I made an OSK for precisely that (I was sure that the company had installed keyloggers, but I couldn't install anything or use anything off a disc to find out, so I pretended it was needed within a project).
I'll have to see if it still works, in this post-win'95 world.
[update] heh. It needs the VB4 runtimes.
[update 2] {sigh} now it's all "Error accessing the system registry". I'll have to update the project files, which will probably take longer than it took to write it in the first place.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
modified 24-Oct-16 14:35pm.
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Mark_Wallace wrote: Years ago, I made an OSK for precisely that
Very cool that you did that. Especially back in the day (win95).
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Piece of cake. Just a load of buttons and a sendkeys command based on button number + modifier (Shift only; I didn't need Alt or Ctrl). It took longer to make and line up the buttons than to code.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I'd love to hear the 'logic' from the devs themselves.
Hand them a shovel before they start the explanation. And some dynamite.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: I'd love to hear the 'logic' from the devs themselves.
It will almost certainly be some variation of "because our PHB told us we had to".
This isn't a feature some dev has decided to add on their own initiative. It's a management-level decision that's been forced on the devs, because it's what other sites in the sector are doing, so therefore it must be the right thing to do.
If you ever query it with the customer support drones, you'll be told it's to increase the security of the site, and they'd "lose their certification" if they changed it. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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That is what I meant; there is no reasonable argumentation to defend the decision.
Happens a lot if decisions are made by people who aren't qualified to do so.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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raddevus wrote: making passwords be limited to a certain length
Which almost invariably means they're not storing them properly. If they were hashing them, the stored value would always be the same length, so there'd be no need for any meaningful limit on the password length.
Even worse are the banks which ask for specific characters from your password. Again, they claim this is to increase your security by preventing key-loggers / shoulder-surfers from getting your whole password. The fact that it means they're storing your password in plain-text, or using reversible encryption, seems to pass them by.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Great post and you are absolutely correct.
Richard Deeming wrote: Which almost invariably means they're not storing them properly
It is amazing how uninformed many of the sites and developers are about these issues.
It's scary. And, it comes as no surprise when Yahoo! has 50 million accounts hijacked.
They're one of the ones who limit password length. Ugh!
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Obviously, if you want user to define a new password for a web site, he should not be able to reuse an existing password, so it really does make sense to prevent pasting password.
And this is even more obvious for a confirm password box. If the user mistype its first password, the confirm box help ensure that he has entered the same password twice reducing the chance of an error. Well, in that case, a site should probably disable all copy operations : copy, cut and paste.
This is not 100% full proof as it would fails if wrong keyboard is selected or if caps lock is active...
If it is a pain to type a password twice, then it would be a pain in the future to retype that password whenever you have to.
And for discouraging people to select insecure password, usually there is a minimal length (often 8 characters) and rules like having at least one digit, one characters, one uppercase character and a symbol...
Thus, if fact, I would that the problem is that you don't really understand security issues as otherwise, you would not complain about having to type a password twice...
Well, if you need to fill a form with many fields (like 10 fields or more) and the validation fails (say the site want phone numbers using 000-111-2222 format and you used (000) 111-2222 instead, or haven't filled a required field), then having to retype the password then begin to be somewhat painful...
Although it is possible to make improvements to make the site more user friendly, you don't always want to take much more time to develop a page (or multiple pages) for marginal benefit.
Philippe Mori
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Philippe Mori wrote: Obviously, if you want user to define a new password for a web site, he should not be able to reuse an existing password, so it really does make sense to prevent pasting password.
It's not about the ability to re-use a password. People who do that (and there are many) probably do it from memory.
Paste is required because most of us use password generators these days so we have a nice, thoroughly random 20 character password each time we sign up to something.
So having generated a key along the lines of "Rx87Htv01pUWxb2WqkLLp" - to have to type it in twice (on a single screen machine, as it happened) was something of a PITA. To then find out that I'm expected to type it in manually each time I want to log in ...
Philippe Mori wrote: the problem is that you don't really understand security issues
Well, maybe I don't, but I do know that 8 characters is stupidly short for a password and that people who make up passwords rather than generate them are going to be a whole lot easier to hack than people who use Guids or lengthy random strings. "pa55w0rd" is not a very good password!
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For those who trust password managers, then enabling Paste is a good compromise... User is still unable to copy a mistyped password in the first box...
When filling a form, often I mistype my password in one box so they mismatch so I really find that the idea is useful...
Philippe Mori
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You'd only need to type it twice if the password-editbox is hiding what you are typing, which is hardly usefull if you are the only one in the room.
Philippe Mori wrote: Obviously, if you want user to define a new password for a web site, he should not be able to reuse an existing password, so it really does make sense to prevent pasting password.
Nonsense.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Password are always hidden on Windows. Newer UI usually have a way to show password. Password being visible is only useful as long as you read what you type...
The problem is that often you thing you have written right so you won't even bother to read what you have wrote.
In my opinion UI like the iPad where one see the password while writing it (last character) make it a bit easier for someone to see your password that to see which letters you type...
Philippe Mori
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Philippe Mori wrote: Password are always hidden on Windows. Newer UI usually have a way to show password. Password being visible is only useful as long as you read what you type...
Not "always", and there have been versions where you had the option to show or hide the password while typing.
Philippe Mori wrote: The problem is that often you thing you have written right so you won't even bother to read what you have wrote.
If the password is hidden then checking it for typo's is not possible. That is why the second textbox come to be.
Not because we assume that the user makes a typo in each entry; otherwise you'd have the same two textboxes for your accountname 
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Most site use an email to identify the user so obviously, if you make a mistake, you won't receive the confirmation mail and it would create an orphan account...
Obviously, one should do much less typing error on its own name... and he might be able to update it afterward.
Even if it is possible to show the password, you would generally have 2 password box anyway. And you often have a confirmation for the email which is always shown.
Philippe Mori
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Philippe Mori wrote: Most site use an email to identify the user so obviously, if you make a mistake, you won't receive the confirmation mail and it would create an orphan account...
..this started a bit before the wide-spread use of email.
Philippe Mori wrote: Obviously, one should do much less typing error on its own name...
You're right, that must have been the reason for the second textbox, silly me. It's not like people can be expected to jot down something important in a single time. So, my bank should ask me to insert amounts twice? And should ask each accountnumber twice?
You're making stuff up here.
Philippe Mori wrote: Even if it is possible to show the password, you would generally have 2 password box anyway.
If you can read the bloody password, then there's no need for a second textbox. It is merely there in case the characters are hidden, which has not always been the default.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Philippe Mori wrote: he should not be able to reuse an existing password
Let me guess - are you the guy behind the Password has already been used by another user message? 
Philippe Mori wrote: This is not 100% full proof
Neither is it fool-proof. 
(Clearly the spelling of the word fool-proof is not fool-proof.)
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Now I understand why the spelling corrector was not accepting fullproof... English is not my first language so I was thinking "full" like completly proof instead of idiot proof...
Philippe Mori
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Not an answer... but this reminds me of when I once had to book some ferry tickets from an internet café. I happened to notice, that site was super-user-friendly. They had auto complete on the credit card number and the ccv :b.
... such stuff as dreams are made on
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IMHO there is no logic for it since as you mentioned, it makes it a real PITA for those of us with password managers. Those developers should be flogged!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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