Are they really that stupid?

[John 6IX Breezy]

No, I’m thinking ‘stupid’ is the way to go. If a stranger walks up to you and flat out asks, ‘Tell me your password’, you’d tell them to go piss up a rope. If a stranger asks how you came up with your password, and you tell them it’s your pet’s name plus your birthday and then GIVE them your pet’s name and your birthday, you qualify as a stupid person.

Boru

Your pets name and birthday are not questions that on their own should raise suspicion; they are not the same as asking what your credit card number is. That's the problem; most people have passwords whose information that can be easily inquired.

As the viewer you already know what to expect and are actively looking for these moments in the video. But these sort of lapses in judgement and attention are not unique to "stupid people" it's simply how the mind processes or fails to process information. Anyone who has taken an introduction to psychology course has been exposed to several of these types of videos.

[Fireball]

OK, not stupid. But any one of those may need help with their drooling on their chin. 

[Abaddon_ire]

No, I’m thinking ‘stupid’ is the way to go. If a stranger walks up to you and flat out asks, ‘Tell me your password’, you’d tell them to go piss up a rope. If a stranger asks how you came up with your password, and you tell them it’s your pet’s name plus your birthday and then GIVE them your pet’s name and your birthday, you qualify as a stupid person.

Boru

Your pets name and birthday are not questions that on their own should raise suspicion; they are not the same as asking what your credit card number is. That's the problem; most people have passwords whose information that can be easily inquired.

As the viewer you already know what to expect and are actively looking for these moments in the video. But these sort of lapses in judgement and attention are not unique to "stupid people" it's simply how the mind processes or fails to process information. Anyone who has taken an introduction to psychology course has been exposed to several of these types of videos.

The whole thing is odd. My sery first password on email and internet was "snv*ze8d". It dates to the early 90s and is not a password that I have used for decades. Still, I remember it from a time when Baud was a thing. Decades later, I still recall it, even though the provider is long gone along with any associated accounts connected.

[Fireball]

Your pets name and birthday are not questions that on their own should raise suspicion; they are not the same as asking what your credit card number is. That's the problem; most people have passwords whose information that can be easily inquired.

As the viewer you already know what to expect and are actively looking for these moments in the video. But these sort of lapses in judgement and attention are not unique to "stupid people" it's simply how the mind processes or fails to process information. Anyone who has taken an introduction to psychology course has been exposed to several of these types of videos.

The whole thing is odd. My sery first password on email and internet was "snv*ze8d". It dates to the early 90s and is not a password that I have used for decades. Still, I remember it from a time when Baud was a thing. Decades later, I still recall it, even though the provider is long gone along with any associated accounts connected.

William!? Is that YOU!? 

[AniKoferBo]

[GrandizerII]

We're all guilty of saying and doing stupid things in life. It's easy to watch a video like that and be like "omg, those idiots" but we tend to very biased about ourselves and think we couldn't have done the same. It's easy to think we are always aware of what we're thinking and so would never fall into traps like these, but that is rarely the case.

[ignoramus]

That's pretty much my philosophy of life.

If I am in a position to complain about the traffic, then I AM the traffic.

[Anomalocaris]

"Humans are stupid.  Really, really stupid."

and occasionally self aware.

---

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Boru

They may not be mutually exclusive, but it seems wrong to confuse them with one another or treat them as being positively correlated. Malcolm Gladwell's recent book forwards the idea of "default to truth." People naturally assume honesty and trustworthiness in strangers; not trusting strangers has a paranoid tinge to it. I think being interviewed by a reporter and camera crew perhaps increases our sense of trustworthiness in them, lowering our guard; or perhaps being filmed shifts cognitive recourses towards our appearance on camera, and away from Type 2 thinking (our more logical, calculated, form of thinking).

In other words, there are better explanations for the behavior than being stupid.

in other words, you think being stupid and exhibiting the effects of being stupid are totally different things.

---

btw, my user name for the Morgan Stanley account is “Anomalocaris”.   My password is “siracolamona”.

hehe, how many of you are gullible enough to try it?

---

I use passwords that are extremely difficult to remember or spell.

Basically, any Polish surname.

I worked at a company many years ago that had the computer system I worked on push out new passwords every 90 days. It always caught me by surprise, because I had a lot of very important work to focus on  and didn't spend a lot of time looking at the password countdown. I almost always had to go to an admin and have them reset my password the day after that renewal, because I would forget. They were just random strings of letters with a sort of phonetic pronunciation to use as a mnemonic. BTW, what grit Polish did you use?

to defeat the ban of mandatory password changes, my old boss’s passwords were, in sequential order, “password01”, “password02”.....”password12”,  by which time “password01” was sufficiently far in the past that reusing it won’t trigger a rule violation, so the sequence rewinds to the beginning.

Hey, old boss, if you are on this forum, you know who I am.  😁

[A. Secular Human]

That's pretty much my philosophy of life.

If I am in a position to complain about the traffic, then I AM the traffic.

I get my traffic info on the FM dial.  Jus' sayin'.

[Sal]

I used a memetic password for years, until one password was compromised from a database leak (check out haveibeenpwned.com to check yours), then I just got a password manager and now I don't even know my own passwords other than the master password which is a long phrase of obliquely ordered words.