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I am sick and tired of meaningless alphanumeric strings whenever I make a travel booking/ purchase over the internet. I scribble down umpteen digits/ letters, and then I can never work out if they are 0s or Os, or 2s or Zs. Likewise pin codes for secure sites etc.
Much simpler: use combinations
of everyday words. A list of 1,000 words, and two word combinations gives you 1,000,000 possible combinations. Chuck in another word and you have a billion. Surely enough for anyone...
Goodbye "ZYR2-F32Z-N00001", hello "moist badger magnet". Cut down on all those mis-transcriptions, and - hell - you might even have a chance of remembering your passcode.
p.s. Why is there so much redundancy in most booking/ reference numbers? I had to quote a 13 digit number to my gas company this morning. There are enough numbers for every man, woman and child on the planet to have well over 1,000 each...
Phonetic Numerals
http://placevaluenumbers.com/home.htm
A 9ai2 in the a00, but it works. [dryman, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
AOL passwords
http://members.aol..../aoh/passwords.html
waugsqueke pointed these out - I've seen some funny ones in my time [jgang, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
[link]
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The one advantage of "ZYR2-F32Z-N00001" over "moist badger magnet" is the ability to say it with a straight face. |
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but the former is less easy to pronounce... |
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do I really want to know what a moist badger magnet is? |
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What I want to know is: Is it a magnet for attracting moist badger or is the badger magnet moist? |
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Sorry - that should have read "moist badger magnate". Guess there are potential problems with homonymy... |
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What if you don't know how to pronounce "magnate"? |
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Didn't one scandinavian bank do this for passwords unitl one bloke got the equivalent of "wood-penis" as his? Or am I going totally mad? |
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I'd never heard of badger as a euphemism for ladies bits before, but I don't see why it couldn't be used as such. Most words can I suppose. In the light of that, the phrase "moist badger magnate" seems somehow even worse than the original. |
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try a google for "growl at the badger". Apparently "badger" is a more common euphemism than I thought... |
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save for your records
croissant confirmation code: clipper idocrase reliable slop
doingle |
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annotation confirmation: kneecap penniless venery |
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If you can make the system work for Ford part numbers I'm all for it. Might have a problem dealing with dictionary password cracker attacks. |
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//Guess there are potential problems with homonymy// If you have a limited number of words you can eliminate that problem. For added redundancy and easier memorizing set it up so the words always make up a simple sentence. Like:
1st is a relative
2nd is a popular name
3rd is a verb
4th is a number for checksum
5th is an object ...
Confirmation for your ticket: "Aunt Jane eats 12 slugs in the yard." |
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AOL does this with temporary passwords on their CDs. |
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Nonsense. It's all a bunch of consumer claptrap. Next time, buy your item in person and to further avoid the rigamarole contemplate (gasp) having a conversation with the person with whom you have the transaction. Not simply the data involved, but various unrelated items. How's your earlobe today? Mine is a bit pesky, got a bit of a scratch. . . . your's as well? That's fascinating. Perhaps there's a bit of an earlobe scratchery going about and so on. try it. |
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You called, sirs?
On the matter of the idea, I think that NewScientist has been running an extended correspondence in the Feedback section on this. |
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Fine idea. As to the question "Why is there so much redundancy in most booking/ reference numbers? I had to quote a 13 digit number ...", this is to prevent number generating attacks on websites from mining personal data about customers. One security measure among (hopefully) many. |
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I like it... you can play that "refrigerator poetry" game with your flight reservations and ATM PIN codes. |
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//Fine idea. As to the question "Why is there so much redundancy in most booking/ reference numbers? I had to quote a 13 digit number ...", this is to prevent number generating attacks on websites from mining personal data about customers. One security measure among (hopefully) many.// |
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Part of the reason is to allow multiple independent sites to generate numbers which are globally unique, and to allow a number to be correlated to the site that assigned it. Although it would be possible to assign each site a number and then have each confirmation number simply take the form sitenumber-indexnumber, people might think it was "too obvious" if the first part of all IDs from a given site was identical. So they munge them up a bit. |
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Also, it should be noted that in some states things like drivers' licenses include a soundex code of the person's name, as well as their birthdate and sometimes some other information as well. Can sometimes cause weirdness when twins with the same initials get licenses. |
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The best use of such a code I've seen was for when I bought a rail ticket from the SCNF. |
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You printed out the final web page and took it to the railway station where a kiosk printed the ticket in response to re-entering the alphanumeric code. It worked like a dream, providing me a valid ticket without any direct human interaction. |
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Typing in common French words would have been harder, even though I do know a modest amount of French. |
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Assuming that there is a direct mapping between alphanumeric codes and words, you could have both, Aristotle.
Can't remember "le mouillé blaireau aimant"?
just remember "ZYR2-F32Z-N00001". |
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With the computing power and password cracking software today this is just too easy to break. |
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But its not about passwords, just confirmation codes, to
prove, for instance, to your rental car company that you
actually do have a reservation, or to your bank that you
did make an electronic transaction. Do these really need
to be super secure? |
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You are correct about confirmation codes. They do not have to be secure. Thanks for clearing that up. |
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It is no less secure provided there are as many combinations. Therefore the idea may require more than three words, which might be a problem.
However, a further reason for so many alpha-numeric digits is to include error-detection digits - precisely because they are so hard to remember and differentiate. Provided the list of words were chosen carefully, this idea includes that 'for free'. |
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"Loane Joan Loan One Loan", by [kbecker]'s example. |
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You see this sort of thing a lot with random-word-combination spam email subject lines too. (One such in my yahoo box now: "dual argumentation anastasia folklore"). |
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Has anyone noticed the computer generated homilies being appended to spam from Aphrodite Marketing? |
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It's obviously constructing sayings from a set list but it appears to have mastered some grammatical rules. |
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registering some software i ended up with an alphanumeric string with no idea whether the o was a letter or a numeral, so dictionary based password would be good |
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