Highly Visible Password: Difference between revisions

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{{trope}}
When passwords are being entered, they're ''always'' displayed on screen in plain text, rather than asterisked out. Why? So you can see how ''clever'' either the characters or the writers are being; often it being some kind of reference or pun.
 
Part of the office-variety [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]].
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== Films ==
* ''[[War GamesWarGames]]'' has a Highly Visible Password typed in a terminal program. In most real-life command line programs, a password simply won't show up ''at all'' rather than showing up either as plain text or as asterisks. This can be irritating if you don't realize you've made a typo because you can't see that there's one extra asterisk.
* Strange inversion in the ''[[Death Note]]'' movie: the ''username'' is asterisked out while the password is highly visible. Some [[Real Life]] systems actually work that way.
* Happened in ''[[Batman Forever]]''.
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** Ditto when Elle was trying to get into her father's computer
* All versions of [[Star Trek]] have the "say the password aloud" version of this trope. Presumably they are checking for voice matches too, but a few episodes have shown that the computer can be fooled by a recording of the officer in question saying the password.
* In an episode of [[Scrubs]] Ted asks JD not to watch him type his password...then says it aloud as he's typing it (it's "alligator3").
* In the episode of [[Sherlock]] ''A Scandal in Belgravia'', Sherlock deduces that that the password on a smartphone that reads "I am locked" (with a four letter space for typing the password above the word "locked") must be "Sher", so as to cause the smartphone to displays the text "I am Sher-locked.
 
== Video Games ==
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** Ironically the password is asterisked when you type it (i.e. when you know it).
* Every time you encounter a keypad locked door in one of the ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'' games, there will be a computer nearby with an email on the screen reading something to the effect of "In accordance to our security regulations, the access code to the lab has changed. The new code is 349".
* In ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Chaos Theory'' there is not so much a highly visible password as a highly audible one. A guard will be having an argument with someone over the phone within earshot of the player. When the player starts listening in, the topic has changed to the dangers of speaking a door code out loud. The frustrated guard will then shout out the door code repeatedly to prove that nobody is listening in.
 
== Western Animation ==
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* The initial version of the Wii's Internet Browser used an on screen keyboard that showed you what you were typing, no matter what kind of field you were typing it in. The latest version will display asterisks if you are filling in a password field, but that's only if you aren't using the word completer.
** That said, just ''try'' and input a password into a field using the screen's keyboard (ie, not plugging in a keyboard into a USB port) with someone in the room and do so without them figuring out what it is. I'll wait. Also, linking your Wii Shop Channel account to your Club Nintendo account requires a password which isn't masked in any way.
** Same thing for the [[PlayStationPlay Station 3]]'s onscreen keyboard
* The iPod Touch and iPhone display the most recently typed letter of the password, with the rest being dots. For instance, if you're typing "trope", it will appear as <nowiki>t, * r, ** o, *** p, **** e, ***** </nowiki>. [[Blatant Lies|Not a bug]] but an [[Anti Frustration Feature]], as the tiny on-screen keyboard makes it very easy to hit the wrong key, and if it was all dots there'd be no way to know you'd done it until your login was refused.
** The DSi's web browser and the Blackberry Storm 9500 do that too for the exact same reason (and probably all touch screen device).
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Magical Computer]]
[[Category:Highly Visible Password{{PAGENAME}}]]