Related link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3639679.stm
I ran across this story in The Week that was on the top of my reading stack today.
Researchers asked if people on the streets of London if they would reveal their login passwords in exchange for confectionary.
I did not find what they actually offered, or even if they offered an actual cholocate bar. I do not know about anyone else, but I would hold out for something better than Cadbury.
What you take in exchange for your password?
how many passwords do YOU want for a piece of chocolate?
I can easily think up enough passwords to get all their chocolate.
I can even give them a real password and then change it before they can use it.
Of course there are gullible people but there are far more people that are smart enough to know a free bar of chocolate for giving information that cannot be tested for truth and will therefore just make up an answer.
I know there are problems with all the miriad usernames and passwords people need to remember, which is why many people tend to standardise them whereever possible. It gets impossible to remember them all otherwise.
Until such time as biometric user verification becomes cheap enough and standardised so that it gets easy to use that instead of having to enter usernames and passwords everywhere people will continue to do so.
I Would
I would give them one of my obscure passwords and not tell them what it was for, or my login name. Here's one: jB3pQ7wA9. Gimme my chocolate!
I would lie for chocolate
I get chocolate, they get an invalid response on their survey.
Consider it a form of evolution in action, or a less severe game of the Darwin Awards.