I tried to send a message to Bank of America a while ago through their online contact form. It kept giving me errors, saying it didn't accept "special characters", but not specifying what they were. I finally narrowed down "special characters" to mean periods and commas, after already removing such evil punctuation as dollar signs and slashes.
I thought Sears Canada was bad. They require that:
For your protection, your password must have at least 8 characters, use letters and numbers, and must also: not have more than 4 of the same character not have more than 6 consecutive character types not be your email address
These places basically ensure that we won't be able to use any sort of mnemonic to remember our passwords and thus require us to write them down!
A lot of banks have stupidly retained their telephone banking password system for use online... which means you're restricted to very short passwords, with no symbols or spaces allowed, and probably case-insensitive as well. And it doesn't matter how hackable that is, they aren't going to change it because they have deluded themselves into thinking their customers need to be able to use the same password over the phone as online.
For instance, Bank of Montreal requires all their online banking passwords to be exactly 6 characters, no more, no less. Alphanumeric only - no symbols or punctuation allowed.
For a while, one of my passwords was the Konami code. Another one was the code for Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I changed them, so I can finally delight in my geekiness with others.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 12:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 02:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 04:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 04:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-07 12:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-09 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 02:09 am (UTC)For your protection, your password must have at least 8 characters, use letters and numbers, and must also:
not have more than 4 of the same character
not have more than 6 consecutive character types
not be your email address
These places basically ensure that we won't be able to use any sort of mnemonic to remember our passwords and thus require us to write them down!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-06 03:09 pm (UTC)For instance, Bank of Montreal requires all their online banking passwords to be exactly 6 characters, no more, no less. Alphanumeric only - no symbols or punctuation allowed.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-07 02:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-07 12:16 am (UTC)