On 05/07/05, Habj <sweetadelaide(a)gmail.com> wrote: This is absolutely correct, and reasonably standard practice; what better verification could there be? There are password reminder questions, but IMHO these either boil down to "you forgot your password, what's your password?" [be it the same one or a secondary "backup" password] or helpfully assist anyone trying to guess their way into your account. In fact, IIRC, both passwords are valid indefinitely - there is no reason for an "I forgot my password" feature to disable normal use of the account. If the randomly generated password from the e-mail is used, you have the chance to set it to something you haven't forgotten; but if you haven't forgotten the original after all, don't bother. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On 05/07/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer(a)wordzen.net> wrote: If I remember the gist of the code right, then yes, it probably does. Glancing at the code, I think it gets deleted from the DB when you next change your password. Not really - it's no easier to guess than your "real" one (probably harder, unless you're paranoid enough to use properly pseudo-random strings rather than something vaguely word or number like), and only you ever knew it. Since exactly one random password + one "real" password can be active at any time, it's equivalent to halving the odds of picking the right one randomly. Sounds scary, until you consider that half of several billion (?) possibilities is still several billion possibilities. I don't know what the odds actually are, but human predictability reduces the search space by far more than having 2 valid passwords ever could. [And as I say, the generated password is likely in that part of the search space that crackers would leave till last, as it's more likely the user will have chosen something at least vaguely predictable]. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On 05/07/05, David Benbennick <dbenbenn(a)gmail.com> wrote: So don't register an e-mail address with your account, and then no generated password will ever be sent out that way. This danger isn't really reliant on the password being valid for a long time, only on it being sent to or through an insecure e-mail server. If you're worried someone may be trying to exploit the e-mailed password to get into your account, change your real password, and it will immediately cease being valid. Besides, if this was a banking site, I'd take these issues a bit more seriously; if someone just wants to impersonate or disadvantage you on Wikipedia, I'm sure they could find simpler ways anyway. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On 7/6/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote: BookCrossing uses a similar mechanism, but it's the original password that gets sent out to the registered email address. Problems come when this email address is one no longer in use, and then we have to ask questions based on information stored on the profile that isn't publicly available. I think the only serious attempt at abuse we had was a disgruntled ex-husband who wanted to delete his ex-wife's account. He didn't know her password, he wasn't on the email address, and when we asked him her birthday, he didn't know it! It is good practice to change your password immediately after getting a password reminder. As noted above, it deletes your temp password and you can then choose one that you can either remember easily or scrawl on a post-it and throw away a week later. And again, what precisely is at risk here? WP is a project where just about everything is revertable (and frequently is). If my on-line banking was compromised but I could easily reverse any transactions, I wouldn't be too concerned. And after all, WP allows anyone to edit anything. We seem to deal with malicious users quite well, at least until such people reach senior positions in the WP heirarchy. Probably the only real damage (apart from annoyance and confusion) that could be done by a compromised password is the alteration of private details, and I would hope that these could be restored reasonably easily when the real editor complains. -- Peter in Canberra (the real one)