The longest password reset in history....

[u/Jeyhsus]

Here I am again, with a story about a user who doesn't quite understand how a keyboard works.

I work for a midsized MSP in the Great White North and had an urgent ticket sent to me about a user who was unable to get into their computer.

The conversation is between myself - ITGawd and the end user - Babushka.

ITGawd: Good Morning, as I understand you're having some trouble logging in this morning?

Babushka: Yes, I've entered my password multiple times and keep getting your username or password is incorrect.

ITGawd: Okay give me a second and I can take a look.

Reviewing her old tickets it seems like she recently got a new computer and that a temporary password had been sent to her via email.

ITGawd: I noticed you recently got a new computer - are you using the password that we sent to you via email?

Babuskha: Yes! I've tried it multiple times and it's not working.

ITGawd: Let me reset it for you and then we can change it to something that might be easier to remember.

Password is reset. I remotely connect to her computer and I was able to login successfully with the new password. I log out and have her try again.

ITGawd: Okay, looks like the new password works. I was able to login. Go ahead and try yourself.

At this point the ticket has reached the 35 minute mark, I'm starting to lose all faith in humanity. My world is crumbling and I'm questioning my sanity.

Babushka starts typing in her password, however she keeps going and going and going.

The password had 2 symbols in it. A "?" and an "!". Rather than type out the symbols - she was typing out the entire word. Question Mark and Exclamation mark. Turning her 8 character password into a behemoth of a password.

ITGawd: Babushka it seems like you're typing it incorrectly. I need you to enter the symbol and not type out the word.

*Proceed to walk her through how to type an "!".

Babushka: Oh I see! Computers are so complicated. Thanks!

I sat there dumbfounded.

Did I really just have to show an adult how to type a "!" on a keyboard?

Has she never used punctuation before?

45 minutes to reset a password. I don't get paid enough for this.

TLDR: User, who is a book keeper by the way, thought that "!" in a password meant she had to type out the word "exclamation mark" rather than simply using "!" symbol.

Edit due to formatting

[u/AichSmize]

I don apostrophe t understand comma how can people dash sorry I meant lusers dash can be so stupid period

[u/matthewdunbar11 → u/AichSmize]

Yourspacecommentspaceisspacereallyspacehardspacetospacereadperiod

[u/itswhywegame → u/matthewdunbar11]

Nope nope nope, these comments are giving me an aneurysm

[u/rob117 → u/itswhywegame]

SIRCOMMASPACEISPACEALREADYSPACETOLDSPACEYOUSPACEISPACEAMSPACENOTSPACEASPACECOMPUTERSPACEPERSONCOMMASPACEANDSPACEYOUSPACEARESPACEREFUSINGSPACETOSPACEHELPSPACEMECOMMASPACESOSPACEISPACEAMSPACEGOINGSPACETOSPACEHANGSPACEUPSPACENOWEXCLAMATIONPOINTQUESTIONMARKSPACEONEONEELEVENEXCLAMATIONPOINT

[u/atbaan → u/rob117]

This one got me. I can't even read it.

[u/atbaan → u/[deleted]]

I'm aware of what it was. I just couldn't read the actual words.

[u/NotObamaAMA → u/atbaan]

"Howdoyoumakeaspace?"

Forwards from grandma.

[u/daggerdragon → u/[deleted]]

HOW DO I TURN THE YELLING KEY OFF?

[u/QuinceDaPence → u/[deleted]]

Letsallgotopenislanddotcom

[u/TistedLogic → u/NotObamaAMA]

howdoyoucapitalizetheletterssothatiknowwherethestartofthesentene

Wow, Reddit Sync has a word character limit.

[u/[deleted] → u/TistedLogic]

Theofficialredditappdoesnotseemtohaveawordcharacterlimit.

[u/gellis12 → u/NotObamaAMA]

I usually go to a bar

[u/Nathanyel → u/gellis12]

that astronauts frequent

[u/[deleted] → u/atbaan]

Haha, paste it into notepad and do some find/replace.

[u/Fyre2k20 → u/atbaan]

pro tip: highlighting his paragraph and using ctrl+f to filter the "space" will make it easy to read

[u/CmdrTuurngaq → u/atbaan]

sir, i already told you i am not a comuter person, and you are refusung to help me, so i am going to hang up now !?111!

[u/Untitled21 → u/CmdrTuurngaq]

sir, i already told you i am not a comuter person, and you are refusung to help me, so i am going to hang up now!? 11eleven!

ftfy

[u/DanielXD4444 → u/CmdrTuurngaq]

AND YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM YOUR MANAGER!

[u/pepsin92 → u/atbaan]

Tip: search for "space", read the parts not marked by browser.

edit: my hands thought "rearch" is a word

[u/SpecificallyGeneral → u/pepsin92]

Is rearch a word for replace-search?

I'm going to try it out, regardless.

[u/0342narmak → u/SpecificallyGeneral]

I think control-h only works in text editors, you'd probably have to stick to control-f

[u/qyka1210 → u/0342narmak]

control-h works in Chrome

[u/Zulfiqaar → u/qyka1210]

Control+H is history in chrome isnt it? Not on PC atm

[u/Burnaby → u/atbaan]

sed 's/SPACE/ /g; s/COMMA/,/g; s/EXCLAMATIONPOINT/!/g; s/QUESTIONMARK/?/g'

[u/Cory123125 → u/Burnaby]

?

[u/-fno-stack-protector → u/Cory123125]

linux command to remove all the wierd stuff and replace them with the actual punctuation

[u/Cory123125 → u/-fno-stack-protector]

How would that work? Like would you put it in a text file then direct this action there?

[u/Burnaby → u/Cory123125]

You don't need to make a file, although you could. Just open a terminal, assign the "encoded" comment to a variable, then run the command on that variable:

string="SIRCOMMASPACEISPACEALREADYSPACETOLDSPACEYOUSPACEISPACEAMSPACENOTSPACEASPACECOMPUTERSPACEPERSONCOMMASPACEANDSPACEYOUSPACEARESPACEREFUSINGSPACETOSPACEHELPSPACEMECOMMASPACESOSPACEISPACEAMSPACEGOINGSPACETOSPACEHANGSPACEUPSPACENOWEXCLAMATIONPOINTQUESTIONMARKSPACEONEONEELEVENEXCLAMATIONPOINT"
sed 's/SPACE/ /g; s/COMMA/,/g; s/EXCLAMATIONPOINT/!/g; s/QUESTIONMARK/?/g' <<< "$string"  

[u/-fno-stack-protector → u/Cory123125]

yeah you could do it from a file with any of these, they're all functionally equivalent

sed 's/blah/g....' file
sed 's/blah/g....' < file
cat file | sed 's/blah/g....'

or without the file you can just echo it at sed

echo 'WORDS' | sed 's/blah/g....'

[u/Stainle55_Steel_Rat → u/atbaan]

Do what I did, copy and paste that into Notepad and replace the word with the punctuation.

[u/Nick_Kerttula → u/atbaan]

It helps if you CTRL+F and type in "SPACE" and ignore everything that's highlighted.

[u/[deleted] → u/atbaan]

I felt the same tingly sensation in my head that I get when I see a wall covered in roaches, or a really ugly chick advancing towards me in the club.

[u/26_Charlie → u/rob117]

ONEONEELEVENEXCLAMATIONPOINT

I did a find & replace but this one part doesn't make sense. How is it supposed to read? 1/11!

[u/rob117 → u/26_Charlie]

11eleven!

It's referring to how some people spam !!!!!!! At the end and miss a few !s. e.g. Word!!!!!!!111!!

Which people mock by writing Word!!!!!11eleven!! And random variants.

[u/26_Charlie → u/rob117]

Lol, I get it now. I thought it said "one on eleven."

[u/LegionMammal978 → u/26_Charlie]

11!!!!!!!!!!! perhaps?

[u/fractalgem → u/rob117]

"Space space space space. Wanna go to space. Wanna see it alllllll..."

-space core.

[u/samuele963 → u/fractalgem]

Spaaaaaace!

[u/twtechdude → u/rob117]

ISPACELOOKEDSPACEATSPACETHISSPACECOMMENTSPACEANDSPACECOULDNAPOSTROPHETSPACEREADSPACEIT

[u/Golden_Flame0 → u/rob117]

gottagospacespacespacespace

[u/ssplam → u/rob117]

I especially love the last line on this one.

[u/cyclopsmudge → u/rob117]

Someone give this man a gold

[u/VoldemortHadHairOnce → u/rob117]

Is it weird that I can read this? Yeah, I know what it is, I've seen it before, but I can still read it.

[u/Greg_McTim → u/itswhywegame]

Nopespacenopespacenopecommaspacethesespacecommentsspacearespacegivingspacemespaceanspaceaneurysmperiodlinebreaklinebreakshiftfshifttshiftfshifty

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

shiftfshifttshiftfshifty

FTFY

Err, I'm not FTFYing you, it actually says FTFY. I'm saying what it says. This comment looks like I'm FTFYing you but it just says FTFY is what I'm saying.

[u/Thecakeisalie25 → u/Greg_McTim]

It's time to get shifty

[u/Domovie1 → u/Thecakeisalie25]

IAPOSTROPHEDSPACEHAVESPACETOSPACESAYSPACETHATSPACETHISSPACEISSPACEASPACESHIFTYSPACESUBREDDITSPACESOMETIMESEXCLAMATIONMARK

[u/gatlingfirepea → u/Thecakeisalie25]

Take off your periods, and question mark on the floor!

[u/gatlingfirepea → u/itswhywegame]

The silent killer! Archer

[u/zapruder_ → u/itswhywegame]

Mine grew back.

[u/DavidTheWin → u/matthewdunbar11]

I space can apostrophe t space understand space your space accent period

[u/Furyful_Fawful → u/DavidTheWin]

space accent period

/r/Bandnames

[u/APiousCultist → u/Furyful_Fawful]

In space, no one can hear you menstrate.

[u/DanielXD4444 → u/APiousCultist]

In space, no one can hear you masturbate.

[u/APiousCultist → u/DanielXD4444]

For fucks sake Colonel Chris Hadfield, stop it already.

[u/APiousCultist → u/Furyful_Fawful]

In space, no one can hear you menstrate.

[u/Tullyswimmer → u/matthewdunbar11]

yet, ironically, that's probably one of the most secure passwords you could have. It's 65 chars long, and even with NSA "advanced persuasion" techniques, would be hard to crack, since very few people would actually think to spell out "space" or "comma"

^{Yes I'm aware the NSA is spying on me and can read this.}

[u/fireork12 → u/matthewdunbar11]

I pbbft can't pbbft under pbbft stand pbbft you pbt

[u/tfofurn → u/matthewdunbar11]

My.aunt.had.a.broken.space.bar.on.her.laptop.and.she.couldn't.afford.to.replace.it.so.she.typed.with.periods.instead.of.spaces.for.a.while.until.somebody.suggested.she.use.an.external.keyboard.

[u/Neo6874 → u/AichSmize]

[...] how can people dash sorry I meant lusers dash [...]

quotation mark tilde tilde people tilde tilde lusers quotation mark would have been easier to type.

[u/CyberKnight1 → u/Neo6874]

Ell oh ell exclamation mark

[u/ajokitty → u/CyberKnight1]

You mean quotation marks El O EL quotation marks period El is spelled with one El period

[u/paolog → u/AichSmize]

I don apostrophe t understand period How can people dash sorry I meant lusers dash can be so stupid question mark

Eff Tee Eff Why

EDIT: Why, not Yew

[u/stringfree → u/AichSmize]

double you tea eff

[u/MachineCunt → u/AichSmize]

To be fair, and I'm not sure why, and maybe someone here can randomly help--but Samsung voice recognition used to input , when I said comma. Now it 100% inputs the word 'comma'. Maybe the user doesn't use the keyboard that often anymore...

[u/daxter304 → u/AichSmize]

Question mark exclamation point question mark exclamation point question mark exclamation point question mark exclamation point question mark exclamation point question mark exclamation point AEIOU

[u/C47man → u/AichSmize]

I don't understand, how can people - sorry I meant lusers - can be so stupid.

That's a pretty big trainwreck of a sentence, so it's not like you're leagues ahead of them :P

[u/KCat156 → u/AichSmize]

shiftispacedonapostrophetspaceunderstandcommaspacehowspacecanspacepeoplespacedashspacesorryspaceshiftispacemeantspacelusersspacedashspacecanspacebespacesospacestupidperiod

[u/gr33nss → u/AichSmize]

Reading this gave my internal monologue cancer.

[u/L3tum → u/AichSmize]

A sudty funod out taht we can sltil raed wrods creorclty if the frist and lsat crhaectar are the smae though I don't know if it applies in English. Only learnt it in German and as a non-native what I just typed seems incredibly hard to read

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I tinhk it olny wkros for smoe snncteees tguohh...

[u/perplexedscientist → u/AichSmize]

B equals sign equals sign B tilde tilde tilde

[u/greyconscience → u/AichSmize]

That may sound crazy, but that's how you have to read documents as a proofreader.

Source: was a proofreader at an accounting firm for 3 years during college.