Perlmonks can't mail you the password if it's one-way encrypted.

Best is to stick with a randomly generated password and to store it into your browser or password manager.

When forgotten get it mailed to you.

> and should not be too difficult to fix.

This would imply adjusting the What's my password? mechanism too.

PS: And no, in my private scratch pad you'd neither find my credit card nor my email passwords nor the number of the Russian officer who's handling agent orange in the white house.

I keep such information exclusively to myself and twitter.

Lanx writes:

This would imply adjusting the What's my password? mechanism too.

Yes, of course. You can improve easily by creating a fresh random password and mailing that to the user, and then store it encrypted. After all, they forgot their password, right?

This is still bad security practice, though, as plain text email isn't actually secure. With a bit more effort you can get a decent self-service password reset function. This has been done before, it isn't rocket surgery.

Yes, of course. You can improve easily by creating a fresh random password and mailing that to the user, and then store it encrypted.

No, please no!

(I know many websites do this.)
So everone claiming "I am user X and I forgot my password" can now reset my password, and I am locked out and have to check my email.

The minimum password procedure should be: store an intermediate token, send the user a link with that token and then let them enter their new password. And that means, we need a new endpoint *and* a new database table probably. So it's not that trivial.

> With a bit more effort you can get a decent self-service password reset function. This has been done before, it isn't rocket surgery.

I know, "a decent self-service password reset function" was my first task at my current job.

Good luck integrating it here!

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}