Level of difficulty for “Your move!” tactics problems. (Problems)

by dlwyatt, Ohio, Thursday, November 20, 2008, 23:45 (6233 days ago) @ Tony Kosten

? ? ...he noticed that my password is
? ? displayed in the browsers address bar when working through the puzzles.
? True, I've no idea why as it was a programmer who did all the original
? coding. We keep all the results in a database so we can see how you are
? doing!

Well, the short answer is that the forms for the workouts are using HTTP GET instead of HTTP POST. Even if it were using POST, though, your password would still be going across the network in plain text (though it wouldn't be showing up in the address bar anymore), unless the site used SSL.

It's just a characteristic of a fairly simple home-grown web application that doesn't use a more sophisticated authentication / session mechanism. It's good idea to use a different password on this site which you don't use anywhere else, but beyond that, I don't think ImproveYourChess is such a sensitive site that it needs particularly strong security.