Loading ...Update 2: Actually, it looks as though the password hash feature is, in fact, random and not just a security measure. It’s purpose seems to be to break GMail utilities. The exact nature and effect remains to be seen. Several utilities that I use are still functioning fine.
Update: The sky has not fallen. The end is not yet near. Apparently, the graphical word hash is a security feature that you see when you type your password incorrectly several times.
I have not seen this on the servers I log-in to but Fluffy Panda reported on the GTray discussion list:
Gmail has just implemented a new login mechanism, apparantly directly aimed at preventing automatic logins. Now you need to read a deformed word and type it in before you can log on.
The deformation doesn’t look too bad and I think I might bbe able to write some OCR software that can read it 80% of the time but since it’s a new feeature and likely to be changed again fairly quickly I think I’ll wait and see for now.
If the people on this list would email google and let them know that the new login mechanism is A Bad Thing ™ then maybe they’ll just take it away all by themselves.
Very interesting indeed.
7 Comments Received
September 1st, 2004 @5:29 pm
I assure you OCR is not needed for this. Google just wants notification programs to play fair and not load the server. Most notifiers make a big mistake in the mail check process.
Mail Notifier ( http://www.dynadvance.com) has solved these issues and will come out with a new version in a few days.
September 4th, 2004 @12:29 pm
I have noticed the password hash cause login problems with both of my programs gNotify and gPopper (formerly PGtGM), and as far as I can tell it’s related to the login frequency.
On both of my programs, if I set the “check for new gmail” option to 1 minute, I get failures after about 5 logins. If I set the check for new gmail option to 3-5 minutes (or longer), I rarely get any errors.
I’m guessing that if you try to login too many times within a given period of time that it starts asking for word verification.
That’s definitely what it seems like with my programs.
Izzy
http://www.ImIzzy.com
September 4th, 2004 @1:59 pm
“I’m guessing that if you try to login too many times within a given period of time that it starts asking for word verification.”
That can’t be it: I just had the verification prompt for the first time, and I had’t logged into my GMail account for almost a day. (And I’ve got no notification utils or anything running.)
Baumi
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