| If passwords were not masked, I would now know most of the passwords of everyone in the office, and all of my family. I always look away when someone else is typing in a password, as my eyes are drawn to the keyboard and I can pretty well read what they type just from the keys. So out of respect, I turn my head. If the password were actually on screen, it would be many times harder not to see it. I don't think I'm unusual. I'm at computers with other people usually once or twice a day when they enter a password. I don't want to know their passwords! And as the system admin, I don't want them seeing the password when I have to type it in to fix stuff for them. It's not malicious people who might be installing keyloggers and all that that masked passwords help against, it's simply day to day privacy and permissions. I don't have a problem popping round to a team-mate's office to enter a password to let them install some basic software package, or a hardware driver update, or whatever. But if they saw the password, then soon they would know it, and for sure would use it once or twice, and more and more random crap would get installed, and soon malware, and so on. On the other hand, being able to turn on visibility occasionally is useful. (Ah! No wonder it's not working... your keyboard is still in Korean mode... Oh, right, British mode, the double-quote doesn't live there...) |