I was somewhat frustrated when signing up for an account a website for work recently.  We were doing this to help with the collection and analysis of  publication rates from the universities that I work with using  ISI Web of Science.  I don't envy my colleague who has been preparing searches which stretch the limits of the search parameters for this service.

On setting up a new account, the site asks for the usual range of information, including a strong password.  Now I am all in favour of proper security.  Using your kid's name, or favorite holiday destination just is not good enough for your top secret files, and your root password.  However this site requires an eight letter password with at least one a number, a punctuation character _and_ a capital letter.

All I will do is to save my search preferences and perhaps list of my favourite journals. I really, really do not need a paranoid strength password for this site.