Mobile Site Owners Should Abandon Password Masking
In his latest “Alertbox”, Jakob Nielsen recommends that websites stops masking passwords as users type them. He outlines the drawbacks of password masking and explains that this causes login problems and lost business:
* Users make more errors when they can’t see what they’re typing while filling in a form. They therefore feel less confident. This double degradation of the user experience means that people are more likely to give up and never log in to your site at all, leading to lost business. (Or, in the case of intranets, increased support calls.)
* The more uncertain users feel about typing passwords, the more likely they are to (a) employ overly simple passwords and/or (b) copy-paste passwords from a file on their computer. Both behaviors lead to a true loss of security.
He also explains that password masking was “a particularly nasty usability problem” on mobile devices.
Dennis Bournique raised that issue last year and also felt that password masking was not necessary on mobile sites.
Indeed, with such a small device on your hand and a tiny screen, who is going to see what you are typing? If you’re using password protected sites on your phone, I’m sure you often do many attempts before typing your password correctly (I know I do with Bloglines or Gmail).
Nielsen recommends abondonning this feature on web sites, and also on mobile sites. Personnaly, I’m not sure this is good idea for desktop web sites, Nielsen forgot to mention that you often log in to a web site while many people can look at your screen (think open-space offices, internet cafés, etc).
But for mobile websites, this makes perfect sense and will provide a more enjoyable experience.
Posted by Nadir on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 8:56 am.
6 Responses to “Mobile Site Owners Should Abandon Password Masking”
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Left by Vertu Price on July 9th, 2009
Not so sure if its a good idea to do away with this completely, there are still a lot of people who use shared computers in busy areas, not everyone is keyed into mobile browsing devices just yet.
Left by mat on August 19th, 2009
sure if its a good idea to do away with this completely, there are still a lot of people who use shared computers in busy areas,
Left by murli on October 11th, 2009
Thanks for sharing
Left by koko on October 30th, 2009
I like to read your blog , i will be back often ,thanks
Left by Wholesale Electronics on February 24th, 2010
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