I mean like, after I type a password on a computer, I’d rub my fingers across the entire keyboard to make sure any fingerprints/oil-residues gets evenly distributed so its harder to know the password. Same with phone unlock codes, I just use my fingers to rub against the part of the screen where the virtual keyboard was displayed.
Am I being weird? I’ve had this habit since the first time I got my first digital electronics.
This, 1000% this.
IT guy here.
Nope, my phone uses facial recognition to unlock, and my computer passwords are wither random letters and numbers or a full passphrase, both of which use multiples of the same letter and different capitalizations.
Example:
Random string, similar to passwords I have used in the past:
“r82ZwQqDW”
Looking at a keyboard where you could see all characters used it would look like this:
dqrwz28 + shift
Figuring out the password above from these letter by logic is basically impossible, so they have to brute force it, only they don’t know the length of the password, which uses more time.
Passphrases are even better, using something like:
CreepySmilingHorseSnortsLead2016!
Just look at all of the reused letters!
No way someone would guess that the characters acedghilmnoprsty0126 + shift would spell the password above.
Is everyone here paranoid?
glances at c/privacy
Yes
Yes you are being weird. Why do you think anyone will bother getting physical access to your device?
Money?
There’s less of a risk with something hard to separate a person from like a phone, but a payment terminal is a massive target.
You are ignoring the other layers of your security.
They have to have the card you are using and you can cancel any suspicious charges you see.
Nope. Don’t you type on your keyboard anyway. Like right now I just worte a whole bunch of different letters. I don’t think I put in my password so often it stands out. Same with the phone. My fingers already go all over it. I mean icons are way over one screens worth. Its not like the movied door code thing where the only input it ever gets is the code.
I’ve never heard of that being used to steal a password—for one thing, it wouldn’t reveal the order in which you pressed the keys, so it would still leave n! possibilities (24 possibilities for a 4-digit pin, or 40,320 for an 8-letter password). And in any case, if someone were to examine the keys afterward, it’s more likely they could see which keys you wiped if you just wiped the ones you used (and if you wiped all of them, it would make it easier to steal the password of the next user).
The bigger thing to worry about is a hidden camera recording your key presses—and to counter that, I position my fingers over all the keys I’ll use and then move all my fingers with each press, so it’s harder to see which key was actually pressed.
Typing a password: keepass. I’m not typing my who knows how long passwords on my keyboard.
PIN Pad: I wipe it, and cover the pin pad too in case someone with good visual memory sees it.
ATM: metal pads don’t blatantly show on thermal imaging, so just cover it with my hands. Also try to shake off the card reader/metal pads, they’re built to resist that so if you manage to pop something off, congratulations you exposed a card skimmer.
Phone password: 32 character passcode, no Touch ID, good luck trying to get into it. If anyone can decipher it just by looking at the screen, at that point they deserve it.
My screen has a matte foil on it.
Hard enough to see any fingerprint.Maybe a question for therapy.
Therapy would say “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” while writing the notes on their WINDOWS Computer with Copilot Enabled. Btw my country is fascist, the more notes that get on their system is more tools to suppress dissent especially for a non-white person like me living in a white-majority country.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry
I think you’re quite paranoid. You asked the community’s opinion so I gave mine
Eh, therapists are not cybersecurity experts. They have no way of knowing if this is reasonable or not. Just strategies for if it is emotional.
When people say shit like this, I wonder if they’ve ever been.
If you are a regular-ass person using their normal phone/computer, and have no reason to suspect someone is trying to hack you, then this is some extremely paranoid behavior.
I check for card skimmers, but the things I would type into have so many people touching them in a day. I wipe my keyboard down at work to cut down on communicable sickness.
I’ve seen a lot of new what look like thick foam pads stuck to the right side of cc pin pads to prevent a new skimmer device from being overlayed on top without it being obvious.
I do that at the ATM and I also double-check for scanners on the bank card input.
My phone unlock is a cluster fuck so I’m not worried about anyone who tries it. Scarier is that there’s ways to bypass it, so if it gets stolen I’m kinda fucked.
I don’t wipe the keypad off but I do pull on the card slot just in case there’s a card reader, especially in bigger or new cities.
I’m a big city boi so that tracks.
I use my phone or something else I am holding to press the buttons so my fingers never actually come into contact with the surface; or use tap to pay which also bypasses the PIN entry on most POS systems. I also use my feet to open doors that are push to open. Thank COVID for this quirk; It has nothing to do with worrying about security lol
No, I lick the entire keypad/keyboard after entering my pass/pin to ensure my DNA is on all keys. This is the only true path to security.
If it’s an outdoor pin pad the winter, such as a gas station, I’ll touch all the keys so the thermal signature doesn’t show which keys I pushed.
