Humorous tale from the IT world

[WT]

Many of you guys working in a corporate world are aware of how user accounts are typically assigned for any users wishing to log in to a domain:

First initial, Last name

It works (usually) with no hangups, other than an abundance of Smiths or other common last names to cause some confusion, but how do you gently deal with those ..... other accounts that just don't fall into a proper category ??

Lets take our new employee, one Tammy Watts, looking to secure her fame and fortune at the company.


Shall we act as if nothing is amiss ?? Shall we just send her the paperwork and hope her cubemates will assist her in her login endeavor ?? Geez, its not like we can even add an 'a' after the 'T' .. that just makes it sound like a southerner saying the word !

I'm just glad I am an IT guy and not the network administrator in such a case

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I used to have a user, first initial H last name Orr so it basically was pronounced Whore@domain.com

 

[Doppel]

I believe it. I've seen equipment named following conventions like this and form quite inappropriate words. Generally the person naming will take it upon themselves to slightly mess the rules up to avoid such a thing, though!

 

[FancyTurtle]

I have actually done this before when I was in-charge of a small local pc repair company we assigned all clients a user name and password for the website forum and we had a couple like that cant remember them off hand but we just left them as is and changed them on request

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Add a middle initial or let her use tammyw

 

[Ken g6]

WattsT-o be done in such a case? I wonder. :hmm:

 

[arcenite]

This is one reason why companies are shying away from doing this. Another is security.

One could argue that a known username pattern is just as much of a security risk as weak passwords.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

This is one reason why companies are shying away from doing this. Another is security.

One could argue that a known username pattern is just as much of a security risk as weak passwords.

While this may be true. I HATE dealing with emails that are like ht224@blahblah.com. There's a point where you lose some security for practicality.

If your company is less than 1000 people then firstinital lastname. Over 1000 firstinitial middleinitial lastname.

 

[blurredvision]

I'm a system administrator and we use the same naming convention for new users. About 5 months ago, one of my clients hired a guy named Ty Estes. We decided to include the Y as well when creating him.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

One of our hosted software vendors generated a random password for our clients to use for accessing some of our public info. fuhk029. The last part I don't remember, but do remember the fuhk...didn't take much convincing for them to generate another password.

 

[Lithium381]

sandy.virgina@domain.com

 

[Red Squirrel]

lol we run into that sometimes, it's funny. We actually have a user account named apigeon . I always laugh when I see that. That's not the only naming convention that does that though. There was this system I used to deal with that had this really weird convention, in fact this is worse imo. It would generate a username based on the first and last name with some kind of algorithm. There was one user that ended up having a username of aslut001 or something like that lol. Oh and we also have a username of acoholic. That's always funny too.

Personally, I'm a strong believer in firstname.lastname. The odds of getting a duplicate are really small, and it's just easier to manage especially in a big environment. Where I work we have easily 5000 accounts and it's first initial last name. I run into duplicates all the time and its just a pain because it only tells you at the very end then you have to start over. In REALLY big environments I would even go as far as appending a number at the end. Maybe the two digit year of employment or something.

 

[trmiv]

We have a few funny ones. One user have that's not quite there, but still makes me laugh at the possibility is amalpass. If the last name was only Nalpass instead of Malpass!

 

[Printer Bandit]

firstname_lastname never fails. try it out!

 

[FoBoT]

firstname.middlename.lastname.building.floor.cube@megacorp.com

 

[thecoolnessrune]

First Name, Last Name.

 

[xanis]

While this may be true. I HATE dealing with emails that are like ht224@blahblah.com. There's a point where you lose some security for practicality.

If your company is less than 1000 people then firstinital lastname. Over 1000 firstinitial middleinitial lastname.

The company I work for does first inital + last name @ domain. Unfortunately, my last name is too long and three letters are cut off.

 

[Jeff7]

lol we run into that sometimes, it's funny. We actually have a user account named apigeon . I always laugh when I see that. That's not the only naming convention that does that though. There was this system I used to deal with that had this really weird convention, in fact this is worse imo. It would generate a username based on the first and last name with some kind of algorithm. There was one user that ended up having a username of aslut001 or something like that lol. Oh and we also have a username of acoholic. That's always funny too.

Personally, I'm a strong believer in firstname.lastname. The odds of getting a duplicate are really small, and it's just easier to manage especially in a big environment. Where I work we have easily 5000 accounts and it's first initial last name. I run into duplicates all the time and its just a pain because it only tells you at the very end then you have to start over. In REALLY big environments I would even go as far as appending a number at the end. Maybe the two digit year of employment or something.

Steve Smith.

 

[lokiju]

I created an account for a guy named Fernando Aguilar and we had a 1st initial last name naming convention.

Made me chuckle internally at how unfortunate that was for him every time I had to help him.

 

[Exterous]

We had a lot of employees and contractors come and go for our operations so I created quite a few user accounts back in the day. We used first initial, last name. Here are a couple that come to mind:
Ofocke (German)
Lashit (The guys last name was actually Ashit. He was in India)
Sbearry-heller (We shortened it to Sberry-he as our 12 character limit would have made it Sbearry-hell [Yes, we allowed a hyphen in usernames])

By far my favorite was Alan Wesom's username: Awesom

 

[MotionMan]

My best friend from college went on to work for Microsoft. Apparently, Microsoft starts with firstname@microsoft.com, i.e. John Smith would get john@microsoft.com.

If you are the second person with that name, then you get the first initial of your last name. So John Smith would get johns@microsoft.com.

If you are the second person with that first name and first initial of last name, johnsm@microsoft.com.

My buddy had his first name and three letters of his last name (johnsmi@microsoft.com).

MotionMan