Password strength

[KAZANI]

I was denied access to some of my ISP's services, all of a sudden last week. After contacting them it appears they now require account passwords to be 6-8 characters long, only containing lowercase letters and numbers. Isn't that a little weak by current security standards? Furthermore, they require a telephone exchange in order to change the password. Am I being paranoid here or should I be raising hell with their "tech support"?

 

[ch33zw1z]

you should be raising hell...

 

[go_gordon]

That's insane! A password like that would be very easy to crack. Definitely need to change to a new ISP.

 

[KAZANI]

Thanks for the responses. When I raised the matter with one of the ISP's "tech support" rude and clueless kiddies he told me getting "philosophical" on the issue of security is not his job, so go figure! Sorry to press on with the naive questions but, is it a safe practice to share passwords with the ISP over the phone?

 

[Xylitol]

I feel like it's unnecessary for places to require you to have Capitals/Special characters/etc.

Almost no one is going to try to bruteforce a PW. Instead, a keylogger is probably going to be used to find the password which doesn't have any more trouble finding a "complicated" password versus a "regular" password.

 

[ch33zw1z]

is it a safe practice to share passwords with the ISP over the phone?

No.