Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwords?

by HasseHackspett
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Original Post

Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwords?

★★★ Newbie

I've been studying a lot on the topic of network and computer security and frankly, EA's restrictions on their passwords make them way too insecure.

They limit the passwords (of their users) to 8-16 characters and NO SPECIAL CHARACTERS. Why? This is worse than most other web services I used over the years. The fact that they also handle costumers payment information should allow AT LEAST 32 characters. 

 

Can you please tell me why you have so bad security on your user accounts? I know most users don't use good passwords but at least give us the ability to protect our games with long passwords if we want.

Message 1 of 6 (1,440 Views)

Re: Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwo

Champion (Retired)

@HasseHackspett

Lol, I totally agree! Or at least my bf does, I did not really think about it until he told me.

Reading your name I think you might understand the post in made on the Swedish boards, so at least we know that this has been forwarded, but I think that the more people say this out loud, the sooner EA will fix it Standard smile

 

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Allman-diskussion/Losenordsbegransningar/m-p/6669057#M97

Message 2 of 6 (1,420 Views)

Re: Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwo

Community Manager

@CMeki@HasseHackspett

 

I disagree, 16 characters is enough. The number of possible passwords with 16 characters is enormous (16^26 IIRC). More of an issue is people choosing easy to remember/guess passwords such as 1213456 or password123. Personally, I use the following link to generate strong passwords and then store them securely (somewhere with two factor authentication at a minimum)

 

https://www.random.org/passwords/

barry.png
Message 3 of 6 (1,406 Views)

Re: Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwo

Champion (Retired)

@EA_Barry

Well, I guess you cannot read my Swedish post. This is not an issue for me, but my boyfriend has a system for his passwords. To me, they look like they're generated so I've no clue how he does it but he has unique passwords for everything and still remembers them using this system. For him, I'm unsure about how big the issue of security is, but his main question is; WHY are there these restrictions? Is there a reason for them? 

He's a software engineer and did not think it was a big deal to change the system to include special characters for those who wanted it. Standard smile

He has a password now for his EA account that does not follow his system and thus he's more likely to forget it, which he thinks is nonsense, just because he cannot use more than 16 characters or special characters (he would only need one of those to make it work I believe). It's just an unnecessary restriction if there's no good reason for it :P

Message 4 of 6 (1,402 Views)

Re: Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwo

Community Manager

@CMeki

 

Maybe as we are a global company special characters are excluded to prevent issues when traveling to other countries resulting in some characters being unavailable via the keyboard?

 

As for the limit on the number of characters, again maybe 16 was considered to be enough.

barry.png
Message 5 of 6 (1,391 Views)

Re: Why do EA only allow 16 characters and no special characters in their passwo

Champion (Retired)

@EA_Barry

Might be, but I'm not talking about åäö, but rather !?& etc Standard smile 

Message 6 of 6 (1,386 Views)