What is a good phonetic alphabet for a password application?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/871332
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I'm writing an application that will create "difficult" passwords for the user. The user will only see the password once, and they'll copy it into a client that will remember it for them forever.
Works great on a full-fledged PC, where I can select the whole password while it's on display in the browser, then paste it into the client that will be using it.
Works less great when I generate the password on my PC, then need to manually transpose it onto my mobile device. So for this case, I would like to display the password in some spelled-out unambiguous way to help the user hold it in their minds during the copy.
For example: At6Pq = Alpha tango six Papa quebec
What is a good phonetic alphabet that I can translate the letter components into? Ideally I'd like something that is going to make sense both to English speakers (a slight majority of users) and English-as-a-second-language users?
Passwords generated will be in the form [a-zA-Z0-9]{20}
I'm currently considering the NATO alphabet, but some of the entries like "papa" and "india" just don't ring right for me for some reason.
Solution
Did you see this Wikipedia page that gives an overview of the sommon of the common spelling alphabets used by various organisations/countries? The British Forces/NY Police ones look quite straightforward (all very common words, so probably familiar to most non-native speakers too) - so you may want to go with one of those. In general, I wouldn't worry too much about how they sound - any common spelling alphabet will do. If you want to create one of your own (or a hybrid of existing ones), it probably shouldn't be much of an issue, though I don't see any particular reason for not choosing one of those listed on that page.
Hope that helps.
OTHER TIPS
I'd go with the international standard, and that's the 'NATO alphabet' you refer to. I don't think it is limited to 'NATO'; it is used by airlines, for example. The names are chosen carefully to be distinguishable over noisy circuits.
