Do the number of stars in a password field match the number of stars in the person's real password?

Do the number of stars in a password field match the number of stars in the person's real password?

I have Windows 2000 with dial-up networking. When I dial into my ISP and utilize "remember password", the next time I go to dial in, the password field contains extra characters. Is it adding the Win2k login password to the ISP password? I'm just wondering how this works so I can explain it to other people I work with. Hope you can shed some light on this. Thank you.

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The extra *'s in the password field is just Windows' way of hiding the number of characters in your password from people who might be looking over your shoulder. Regardless of the number of characters in your password, Windows will always show the same number of *'s.

This was first published in September 2001

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