• KittyKatrina (unregistered)

    FI ... ST that's totally secure right?

  • Florent (unregistered)

    é(, that's 25 days on a French keyboard. I don't know how the Frenchness of the keyboard got involved.

  • Fred (unregistered)

    -3rd post?

  • usitas (unregistered) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    -3rd post?
    I think you mean "thrist".
  • nobulate (unregistered)

    fourtst.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Hi everyone, I have a website recommendation list:

    1. http://thedailywtf.com/
    2. http://thedailywtf.com/
    3. http://thedailywtf.com/
    4. http://thedailywtf.com/
    5. http://thedailywtf.com/
    6. http://thedailywtf.com/
    7. http://thedailywtf.com/
    8. http://thedailywtf.com/
    9. http://thedailywtf.com/
  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Why did you blur Prudential Retirement Access in the header, but not for the form entries?

  • (cs)

    08/01/2011 is of course not a date - as there are only 31 days in January, even in the year 08.

  • (cs)

    the dat WTf is probably expecting dd-MM-yyyy instead of dd/MM/yyyy or yyyy/MM/dd

    either way it's a formatting mixup

  • John (unregistered)

    The unhelpful help text is an example of an oh-so-common phenomenon.

    Back in the 80s and 90s when user interface standards started to be a required component of system development you'd often find that the specification would call for help text to be available for every input field (commonly by pressing F1). This then resulted in developers meeting the letter of the law, whilst totally missing out on the spirit.

    Testing an application you'd hit a field like:

    Guinea pig vector: [ ]

    and seeking enlightenment you'd hit F1 and be rewarded with help text which said:

    "In this field you should enter the value of the guinea pig vector."

    Plus ca change.

  • RandomGuy (unregistered)

    TRWTF is basing authentication on the knowledge of a 9-digit number.

    And lets not even start our weekly date format discussion ...

  • YellowOnline (unregistered) in reply to Florent
    Florent:
    é(, that's 25 days on a French keyboard. I don't know how the Frenchness of the keyboard got involved.

    ... on any AZERTY keyboard. There's three of them - I have a Belgian one. Some special characters are different.

    But yeah, that's probably the issue here. If my girlfriend (who has QWERTZ) uses my keyboard, she often gets the same, because on QWERTY and QWERTZ you don't need to hold shift for numbers, so if you forget that you get &é"'(§è!çà instead of 0123456789.

    Anyone wanted to bash AZERTY: well, for numbers we use the numpad usually. The unaltered characters at the numeric positions are full of letters we use quite a lot in French, so it does make sense.

    Captcha: I always wanted to be a haero.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to John
    John:
    The unhelpful help text is an example of an oh-so-common phenomenon.

    Testing an application you'd hit a field like:

    Guinea pig vector: [ ]

    and seeking enlightenment you'd hit F1 and be rewarded with help text which said:

    "In this field you should enter the value of the guinea pig vector."

    Plus ca change.

    Sounds like every entry I've ever seen in the Help document for a Microsoft product.

  • Spencer (unregistered)

    The Mint.com thing is actually from Prudential. They control what information is required for accessing the account through 3rd party services, Mint is just making you fill it in.

  • Anonymous Will (unregistered) in reply to YellowOnline
    YellowOnline:
    Anyone wanted to bash AZERTY: well, for numbers we use the numpad usually. The unaltered characters at the numeric positions are full of letters we use quite a lot in French, so it does make sense.

    I'll bash the AZERTY keyboard:

    • the '.' is accessible only with shift (what moron could possibly think that the most common punctuation symbol should not be accessible directly, while less common symbols are?)
    • uppercase accented letters (Ç, É) cannot be produced (the others can be produced, but only with dead keys, even when the lowercase version can be produced directly)
    • some letters (œ, æ) cannot be produced at all, though they are used in the French language

    Those are serious WTFs. Additionally, caps lock affects all keys rather than just letters. And while it makes sense to have direct access to common accented characters, AZERTY is the only family of keyboard that does so by displacing numbers.

  • Foobar (unregistered) in reply to SirZed

    Hear hear, TRWTF is David G. http://xkcd.com/1179/

  • Buddy (unregistered)

    SINs also have a checksum so in reality there are likely only 10 possible sequences.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    SINs also have a checksum so in reality there are likely only 10 possible sequences.

    SSNs do not.

    http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html

  • Tim (unregistered)

    Not only is Prudential Retirement Access not blurred for any of the questions, if you shrink the picture down even the blurred text is legible.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    SSNs do not. http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html
    According to your reference, there is a published and well known range for the remaining two digits. It appears that on average there would be ~13 possibilities depending on the Area Number (first 3)
  • (cs) in reply to Spencer
    Spencer:
    The Mint.com thing is actually from Prudential. They control what information is required for accessing the account through 3rd party services, Mint is just making you fill it in.

    This. Bashing Mint.com over this is a case of shooting the messenger.

  • Master Builder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    You stole my list!

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous Will
    Anonymous Will:
    I'll bash the AZERTY keyboard: - the '.' is accessible only with shift (what moron could possibly think that the most common punctuation symbol should not be accessible directly, while less common symbols are?) - uppercase accented letters (Ç, É) cannot be produced (the others can be produced, but only with dead keys, even when the lowercase version can be produced directly) - some letters (œ, æ) cannot be produced at all, though they are used in the French language

    Those are serious WTFs. Additionally, caps lock affects all keys rather than just letters. And while it makes sense to have direct access to common accented characters, AZERTY is the only family of keyboard that does so by displacing numbers.

    On my FreeBSD system I can type æ by AltGr+a and Æ by CapsLockOn AltGr+a CapsLockOff. Similarly, capital versions of standard accented letters éèçàâêîôûï are produced by enclosing the lower case version in CapsLockOn CapsLockOff. ÉÈÇÀÂÊÎÔÛÏ. The CapsLock part doesn't work on Windows2000 (haven't tried on 7), and I haven't tried the AltGr+a part on Windows either.

    But as a programmer's keyboard layout, AZERTY sucks donkey balls, because ~#{[|^@]} all live on the AltGr modifier key.

    EDIT: I haven't found how to type the oe thing, unfortunately. AltGr+(letters) gives: æ«€¶ŧ←↓→øþ@ßðđŋħłµ|ł»¢“”n· with ¬¹~#{[|`^@]} on the top-row keys. Yes, you can type thorn, a defunct Old/Middle English letter, but not oe, a proper French one, on a French layout... Go figure

  • Evan (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Will
    Anonymous Will:
    I'll bash the AZERTY keyboard: - the '.' is accessible only with shift (what moron could possibly think that the most common punctuation symbol should not be accessible directly, while less common symbols are?)
    William Faulkner?
  • The Eye Guy (unregistered)

    The expiration date isn't a number; it's a crying cyclops.

  • CigarDoug (unregistered) in reply to YellowOnline
    YellowOnline:
    Florent:
    é(, that's 25 days on a French keyboard. I don't know how the Frenchness of the keyboard got involved.

    ... on any AZERTY keyboard. There's three of them - I have a Belgian one. Some special characters are different.

    But yeah, that's probably the issue here. If my girlfriend (who has QWERTZ) uses my keyboard, she often gets the same, because on QWERTY and QWERTZ you don't need to hold shift for numbers, so if you forget that you get &é"'(§è!çà instead of 0123456789.

    Anyone wanted to bash AZERTY: well, for numbers we use the numpad usually. The unaltered characters at the numeric positions are full of letters we use quite a lot in French, so it does make sense.

    Captcha: I always wanted to be a haero.

    My former girlfriend had QWERTZ, and let me tell you it was no laughing matter.

    (Except when it flared up on 13/32/2013. Then it was hilarious.)

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    I rather like that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey book list, but maybe I'm just prejudiced.

  • Anonymous Will (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    On my FreeBSD system I can type æ by AltGr+a and Æ by CapsLockOn AltGr+a CapsLockOff. Similarly, capital versions of standard accented letters éèçàâêîôûï are produced by enclosing the lower case version in CapsLockOn CapsLockOff. ÉÈÇÀÂÊÎÔÛÏ. The CapsLock part doesn't work on Windows2000 (haven't tried on 7), and I haven't tried the AltGr+a part on Windows either.

    But as a programmer's keyboard layout, AZERTY sucks donkey balls, because ~#{[|^@]} all live on the AltGr modifier key.

    EDIT: I haven't found how to type the oe thing, unfortunately. AltGr+(letters) gives: æ«€¶ŧ←↓→øþ@ßðđŋħłµ|ł»¢“”n· with ¬¹~#{[|`^@]} on the top-row keys. Yes, you can type thorn, a defunct Old/Middle English letter, but not oe, a proper French one, on a French layout... Go figure

    The Caps Lock ruse only works on Unix-like systems, probably as a workaround (Windows doesn't allow different characters to come out of Shift and Caps Lock). Most non-US layouts tend to suck for programming anyway, since language-specific characters tend to push characters such as {}[] to AltGr and make accent-like characters into dead keys.

  • (cs)

    Clearly iBooks has converted those tomes into one-chapter volumes.

    I hope.

    Either that, or there's "Pride and Prejudice -- The Series," based on the wildly successful ShowTime series.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is people talking about a keyboard in response to two images of characters that are generated without user input.

  • Ol' Bob (unregistered)

    Re: valid date - 2011 was a bad year.

    CAPTCHA: luctus - I'd went to the casino and had some bad luctus.

  • (cs)

    "License key expires" screenshot was taken on 8/22/2010

  • Ol' Bob (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Will
    Anonymous Will:
    Steve The Cynic:
    On my FreeBSD system I can type æ by AltGr+a and Æ by CapsLockOn AltGr+a CapsLockOff. Similarly, capital versions of standard accented letters éèçàâêîôûï are produced by enclosing the lower case version in CapsLockOn CapsLockOff. ÉÈÇÀÂÊÎÔÛÏ. The CapsLock part doesn't work on Windows2000 (haven't tried on 7), and I haven't tried the AltGr+a part on Windows either.

    But as a programmer's keyboard layout, AZERTY sucks donkey balls, because ~#{[|^@]} all live on the AltGr modifier key.

    EDIT: I haven't found how to type the oe thing, unfortunately. AltGr+(letters) gives: æ«€¶ŧ←↓→øþ@ßðđŋħłµ|ł»¢“”n· with ¬¹~#{[|`^@]} on the top-row keys. Yes, you can type thorn, a defunct Old/Middle English letter, but not oe, a proper French one, on a French layout... Go figure

    The Caps Lock ruse only works on Unix-like systems, probably as a workaround (Windows doesn't allow different characters to come out of Shift and Caps Lock). Most non-US layouts tend to suck for programming anyway, since language-specific characters tend to push characters such as {}[] to AltGr and make accent-like characters into dead keys.

    Thorn (and eth) are only dead in English. Still used in Icelandic.

  • Evan (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Will
    Anonymous Will:
    The Caps Lock ruse only works on Unix-like systems, probably as a workaround (Windows doesn't allow different characters to come out of Shift and Caps Lock).
    Wut?

    I don't understand what you mean here. If I interpret it as-written, you're absolutely wrong... Shift-1 produces '!' while Caps-1 produces '1'.

    I literally can't think of an interpretation of what you said that is correct.

  • faoileag (unregistered)

    WHAT IS THIS CAPS-LOCK THING YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT?

  • (cs) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    WHAT IS THIS CAPS-LOCK THING YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT?

    http://bash.org/?105199

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Paul Neumann
    Paul Neumann:
    Anon:
    SSNs do not. http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html
    According to your reference, there is a published and well known range for the remaining two digits. It appears that on average there would be ~13 possibilities depending on the Area Number (first 3)

    There are 99 possibilities.

    What's not on that page expressly is that Social Security Randomisation was implemented years ago, so the order listed is not the current order.

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    If you interpret é( as a signed word, it equals -32,216 days, or about 88 years and a few months.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    If you interpret é( as a signed word, it equals -32,216 days, or about 88 years and a few months.
    Oops, I copied the wrong number (-32,216 was 365 x 88). It should be -33,320 days.
  • 7eggert (unregistered)

    Why are SSNs considered to be a secret? If you have to hand it out to a lot of places, it will eventually be public knowledge anyway. Most likely, there are SSN CDs for sale by bank employees to criminals just like the CDs with tax evader's data are sold to my government.

  • (cs)

    what is wrong with knowing ssn? i am not understanding.

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    what is wrong with knowing ssn? i am not understanding.
    you must knot be knowing of nnumbers becaus the are they work of devil and grief. Tell all Hyderabad stop using numbers go do gods work. Cow.
  • (cs)

    SSNs are funny things. For one thing, I know who owns the number before me and after me. I guess they didn't do randomization when they were issued.

    Yes, they are my brother and sister. All applied at the same time (no, we aren't triplets either, born 4+ years apart). My parents just applied for them in the same envelope I guess.

    I don't know anyone else who can say this though!

  • (cs) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    faoileag:
    WHAT IS THIS CAPS-LOCK THING YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT?
    http://bash.org/?105199
    THANKS! THAT WILL MAKE TYPING MY PASSWORD INTO MY AS/400 MUCH EASIER.
  • (cs) in reply to herby
    herby:
    SSNs are funny things. For one thing, I know who owns the number before me and after me. I guess they didn't do randomization when they were issued.

    Yes, they are my brother and sister. All applied at the same time (no, we aren't triplets either, born 4+ years apart). My parents just applied for them in the same envelope I guess.

    I don't know anyone else who can say this though!

    I can say something similar. You didn't need SSNs for children when I was growing up, but you did to get a driver's license. So the sequential numbers before and after mine for a run of about twenty people in a certain New Mexico town were given to the students taking driver's ed from that high school.

  • Daniel (unregistered)

    Well, of course 08/01/2011 is not a valid date. Real dates are separated with dots (e.g. 08.01.2011).

    At least if you live in Europe. And yes, I run very often into stuff like that: our issue tracking system (JIRA) uses the local date format for display, but if you need to enter a date, it only accepts the US format (so yes. you cannot just use the default they propose. You need to reformat it first)

  • Friedrice The Great (unregistered) in reply to Daniel
    Daniel:
    Well, of course 08/01/2011 is not a valid date. Real dates are separated with dots (e.g. 08.01.2011).

    At least if you live in Europe. And yes, I run very often into stuff like that: our issue tracking system (JIRA) uses the local date format for display, but if you need to enter a date, it only accepts the US format (so yes. you cannot just use the default they propose. You need to reformat it first)

    No, real dates are 2011.8.1, at least if you're me.

  • cliff (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    If the first three and last for digits are known, is it even 10^2 options? Is the last digit a checksum? If so it would probably reduce the valid combinations to 10!

    Maybe it isn't though, I'm not familiar with US identity formats.

  • (cs)

    In some states, the 2 digit group in the middle of the SSN matches the year the card was obtained. Since today most SSN's are obtained at or very shortly after birth, that takes it 1 or at most 2 guesses as to the second group.

    Basically, they just as well ask for the whole SSN.

  • (cs)

    obligatory XKCD about the correct way to format dates:

    https://xkcd.com/927/

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