Password strength indicator gives ambiguous feedback

[Janne Hyötylä]

Binary package hint: human-theme

(Not sure if this is a GNOME problem or a human-theme. Please change affects if necessary.)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open Applications > Accessories > Passwords and Encryption Keys
2. Choose File > New...
3. Choose Password Keyring and give any name
4. Type "1234" in the password field and observe the password strength indicator

Already if typed "1234" which is an extremely weak password, the indicator is at 50%.
It is not clear to an inexperienced user what this means.
50% password strength could plausibly mean "strong enough for normal use", while I assume that the recommendation is to use a password where the indicator is at 100%.

The dialog does not explain which strength is a "good" one to have, and what to do to achieve that level.

This more or less defeats the purpose of the indicator, since experienced users already know how a strong password looks like and don't need that indicator, but no real help is offered to inexperienced users either.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Jul 26 18:52:10 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Alpha i386 (20090726)
Package: human-theme 0.28.9
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-3.19-generic
SourcePackage: human-theme
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-3-generic i686

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

I forwarded to seahorse, which is the application your bug report is about. Thanks for having taken the time to report it.

[Janne Hyötylä (janne-hyotyla)]

Yes, of course.

Added bug to GNOME bugtracker.