Why do so many companies and people say that your password has to be so long and complicated, just to have restrictions?

I am in the process of changing some passwords (I have peen pwnd and it’s the password I use for use-less-er sites) and suddenly they say “password may contain a maximum of 15 characters“… I mean, 15 is long but it’s nothing for a password manager.

And then there’s the problem with special characters like äàáâæãåā ñ ī o ė ß ÿ ç just to name a few, or some even won’t let you type a [space] in them. Why is that? Is it bad programming? Or just a symptom of copy-pasta?

  • jetAEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    It’s your browser. You can install JavaScript or a browser extension which disallows the no paste input field. So that you can always paste in.

    The financial institutions that implement that they’re trying to guard against local copy and paste password theft. Any program can have access to the clipboard. So I understand why they do it, and I understand why it’s annoying.

    For financial institutions I highly recommend using something like a Fido 2 key. I’m partial to the yubikey bioseries.