What password would you like to use?

As the move towards using the internet has increased over the last few years, people are creating more and more accounts. Accounts for this credit card, accounts for this store card, you’re mobile phone account, you’re bank account, and all the rest. The accounts I just mentioned there are one’s a lot of people will have, and more than likely you will have an account that you are able to sign into on the internet. The reason I mentioned those types of accounts is because a majority of the time these accounts are opened in person in a shop or bank.

In the past six months I’ve have witnessed someone or created, opened one myself, and on each occasion when it came to the part of creating the online part of the account it goes something like this:

Shop: First Name?

Customer: Matthew

Shop: Last Name?

Customer: Roach

Shop: Email address?

Customer: matthew@mydomain.com

Shop: What password would you like to use for this account?

Customer: Umm…..

Shop: Can be something simple, I’ll type it in

Each time this has occurred I’ve requested that I enter the password myself, on one occasion the shop assistant in this case reply’s:

“I’ve never had anyone ask to enter it themselves”.

That is astounding that no-one else requested to enter their own password, even more astounding that the shop assistant found it ok for them to be asking the customer a password to enter for their account. Wether this be a temporary password you intend on changing when you get home it does not matter, you should never be giving a password to a random person!