Those #!@$& Passwords

Without a doubt, the greatest complaint we hear about the Sunnyside Times is about the passwords.  We can’t remember them, our browsers don’t remember them as they should, we can’t find them, ….

Rejoice – after considerable discussion and thought, including Sunnsyside management, we have decided to (almost) get rid of them.  On Saturday evening of December 14, we will modify everyone’s password to be a common, shared password:  “Sunny”. 

When the change is made, there will be a hopefully minor inconvenience in that the next time you attempt to access Sunnyside Times, you will be forced to log in with the new password.  The reason we are waiting till December 14 is that we want to publicize the change and try to ensure as many residents as possible are aware of it.  Notice that you will may need to create a new bookmark in your browser after logging in with the new password in order for the browser to track it for you.  If you have difficulty, members of the Sunnyside Geek Squad will be happy to help you.

In the discussion about the change, there were two important considerations:  (1) could we get rid of passwords altogether and (2) are we in any way violating a resident's privacy rights.  To the first point, it was decided that we really want to discourage access by persons who ‘accidentally’ hit on the site.  Certainly, a common password will not prevent even a modestly determined intruder from accessing the site. In the event that we find any spam/scam sort of activities because of the open password, we will change the password as a first line of defense. 

To point (2) above, after discussion and over 3 years of actual experience with no complaints about privacy violations at all, it was felt that residents were comfortable with the level of information about individuals and Sunnyside found on the site.  We are asking that if you are aware of something that you consider private in the sense that it should not be available on the new more open website that you contact us.  If it concerns you, we will remove it.  If it concerns another resident, we will investigate and consider removing it.

If you have comments, please contact Don Oxley (x8873 – don@theoxleys.com) or Linda Bradley (x8663 – bradlelm@jmu.edu).