Hi Jon, Here's the ticket where this was proposed: https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/20079
And the commit that implements it: https://github.com/django/django/commit/aeb1389442d0f9669edf6660b747fd10693b63a7 Cheers, Alex On Thu, 20 Oct 2016 at 08:20 Jon Dufresne <jon.dufre...@gmail.com> wrote: When set_unusable_password() is called on a user object, the user's password is set to a random string starting with "!" [0]. The "!" is then used by is_password_usable() [1] to determine that this password isn't usable. My question is, why is a random string used instead of an empty string? An empty string would appear to make the code both simpler and slightly more efficient. Is the random string more secure or solving some other issue I'm not aware of? I tested this idea and all tests pass: https://github.com/jdufresne/django/commit/2332194b449fe4a336c8ea515221955ba0ea3aeb The change is relatively easy as all interactions with unusable passwords are nicely abstracted by functions Thoughts on me following through with this code simplification? [0] https://github.com/django/django/blob/90c3b11e873a326219a68c14a3b5dca0181e7b3c/django/contrib/auth/hashers.py#L78 [1] https://github.com/django/django/blob/90c3b11e873a326219a68c14a3b5dca0181e7b3c/django/contrib/auth/hashers.py#L27 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/django-developers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/CADhq2b7v6BxetkaS6GOW5%3DO1EoXFX9Ke1FWzmCLUs%3DLDjQ5DsA%40mail.gmail.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/CADhq2b7v6BxetkaS6GOW5%3DO1EoXFX9Ke1FWzmCLUs%3DLDjQ5DsA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/django-developers. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/CA%2BKBOKySg7uPpgYDXJ9aq0gL92-bztoZ5FwKbXyNXPDi4yeqng%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.