Vakkotaur

The BBC is reporting survey results that indicate many people would be willing to reveal a password for a chocolate bar. Generally people don't like passwords unless they see a need themselves. And they really don't like having to have a bunch of different passwords, and then have to change them constantly. It gets to be hard to keep track.

I have a story of a couple passwords, now long expired and not re-used in case anyone is wondering. It started when a fellow at work left to go work for someone else. The stuff on his computer was backed up, but backup tapes are notoriously poor, so it was decided to keep his computer around and not have it immediately wiped and re-used elsewhere.

But to prevent someone overzealous with re-use mucking things up, Gene, who would need the data most, decided to put a BIOS password on. This is defeatable, but it means popping the case and therefore might get someone to think that maybe there's a reason that that password is there. On this system, two passwords were possible and he wanted to use them both.

I was asked, since I was in the room (the fellow who left and I had shared the room), what passwords might be good. I jokingly suggested "goaway" ala Slappy Squirrel for the first, and then "byebye" for the second. To my surprise, Gene used these suggestions.

All was fine for a few weeks. Every once in a while Gene would boot the computer and check something or copy something off. But eventually someone else had to check on something. Brian came in and tried to boot it and ran into the password screen. By then, I think I'd forgotten the passwords since I'd didn't need to use that computer and so didn't use the passwords regularly. I told Brian that Gene knew what the passwords were.

Brian phones Genes and asks about the passwords. Gene tells him. And Brian wonders why he was so rude. Gene had related the passwords without any explanation and Brian heard, "Go away. Bye Bye." A short walk to meet face to face cleared things up. Gene later accused me of setting him up. It wasn't a setup, at least not intentionally. I just suggested those passwords because it amused me at the time. I hadn't expected the results they eventually got.