Logons and challenge questions will continue to be used for most people’s computer access for some time to come. So why can’t these credentials be generated unambiguously?

The coder who develops the algorithm for generating random sequences for logons doesn’t have to use them enough to see the problems they’ve generated. And, most coders don’t have any problems with mixed characters, which must be an attribute of their internal wiring that led to their calling in the first place.

But ordinary folk, or at least those who have to produce something tangible to justify their existence, do have a marked tendency to mistake certain letters with certain numbers. This may be due to their focus on producing something useful, and following instructions required to get computer access.

Numbers are numbers, and all of the zero through nine can be used in a credential without any problem. There may be some quibbling about duplicate or repeated numbers, but that’s a fine detail. There is some evidence that suggests number sequence without duplicates seem to be remembered more easily than those that don’t, but it’s not hard and fast.

Letters, however, are a different story. Uppercase I (eye), O (oh) and Q (queue) should be eliminated form any sequence, because they can be confused with numbers. This is particularly dependent on the font being used, which can vary all over the place depending on the application, the browser, and personal screen settings that may belong to another person.

Lower case l (el) should also be eliminated, because it can easily be confused with the number one and occasionally upper case I (eye). Lower case j (jay) is a borderline call, as it can be confused with lower case i (eye), again depending on the font and such.

No ambiguities with the usual Sarbanes-Oxley character set, consisting of symbols. There isn’t a standard set, as yet, but the symbols are sufficiently different from each other to be easily distinguishable.

© Copyright 2009 Chuck Brooks for FutureWare SCG

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