Why Copying and Pasting Passwords Doesn’t Always Work
Published by rich on Friday, April 25, 2008 - 18:31:21 - Filed under Spam
I get a surprising number of SpamButcher spam blocker program purchasers who complain the serial number they get after purchasing doesn't work.I think I figured out why.
The post-purchase email for SpamButcher looks something like this:
Thank you for purchasing SpamButcher!
YOUR SERIAL NUMBER IS: 3261517461814
(No, that's not a real SpamButcher serial number.)
Then let's say the user selects the serial number by double-clicking it.
Thank you for purchasing SpamButcher!
YOUR SERIAL NUMBER IS: 3261517461814_
Some email clients see a trailing space and select it, others don't.
The short of it is that SpamButcher sees the trailing space - and decides it's the wrong number of characters for a valid serial number.
I've encountered this problem dozens of times with trying to enter passwords into websites that I received via email. I suspect half the time I never figured out that having a trailing space was the problem.
I'm not the only person who's encountered this problem with trailing spaces and passwords. So what's the solution?
Webmasters, creators of spam blockers and other application developers should be aware of this issue - and write code smart enough to discard any spaces or carriage returns found at the end of passwords or serial numbers.
In fact, I just made the fix to SpamButcher and will post the updated code later today.