Micheal’s rantings, ravings, and general banter

People hopefully know by now that having a strong password is a good thing. But even if you try to have a strong password, the website may not allow you to.

You heard correctly. The website you are visiting may not allow you to have a strong password. I’ll let you pick your jaw off the floor before continuing.

For argument sake, let’s say that a strong password is the following: ([a-zA-Z0-9-#$@]+)

That’s not the world’s best regex, but it works for this. What this does is it matches any lowercase or uppercase letter, number from 0-9, and the special characters “-”, “#”, “$”, and “@.” Now let’s say the max length of your decently strong password is only 7 characters long. So your super-cool password of “this-is-the-s0nG-Th4t-n3v3R-#nD@” would be invalid, not because it contains invalid characters, but because it is too long. Sad, but that’s what happens on a lot of websites.

Example 1:

ERROR: The new password is too long. It can not be longer than 10 characters. Please fill out the form again and resubmit. - Removed for privacy

Example 2:

Minimum length is 6 characters. Enter a unique password containing only letters and numbers. - Sourceforge.net

Normally you’d think people would encourage the use of longer passwords and passwords that contain special characters, like “!@#$%^&*-_+<>.” No wonder people have problems creating stronger passwords, they aren’t allowed to!