Are our passwords safe?

I can’t tell how many times I registered on a website since I started surfing the Internet, and I bet it’s the same for you. We’ve been through countless registration forms, and we had to choose a username/password pair for each of them.

But I, like the majority of you, tend to use the same credentials for more than one place, sometimes.

I know it’s a good practice to avoid using the same password for too many services but, hey, we’re human beings, and we’re not so good in remembering things. However, maybe I’d be more reluctant to use my favorite password (the one I use to register on countless websites) if I knew that it would end up in clear text on some database, where some malicious DBA can easily see it.

That’s why I think it would be better if registration forms included an indication (maybe just an icon) about whether the password you’ll supply will be encrypted before being stored on the website database.

Maybe times are not mature yet…