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Can Stack Overflow change the password criteria?
The StackExchange account passwords requirements are quite onerous, arbitrary, and undocumented, particularly the requirement of requiring 8 unique characters. Because of this (and other) arbitrary requirements, "Password1" is valid, but "kejkld%&#dswilk" and "h^e2!@^2eKh!e@2" are not. The obvious alternative is to use a different provider (because no other provider has such strict requirements) but then what is the point of even maintaining the Stack Exchange provider? The reason I'd prefer not to is because my provider is Gmail and I have enabled 2 factored authentication which makes it more time consuming to log in and I delete history/cookies every day.
Try it for yourself here.
Note: This is a formal feature request based on this rant.
htqwfgalbdbm
is a perfectly good password. The problem (for which I don't offer a solution) is that it's difficult to design a heuristic that rejectsPassword1
but acceptshtqwfgalbdbm
. Loose requirements are great for those of us who know what we're doing, and dangerous for those who don't. (And my mother's maiden name is "Bbdoiolholhj".) – Keith Thompson Feb 22 '12 at 21:52