User (computing)
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- "Username" redirects here. For the same term in Wikipedia, see [Username] ().
Users are also widely characterized as the class of people that uses a system without complete technical expertise required to fully understand the system. In most hacker-related contexts, they are also called real users. See also End-user (computer science).
A computer user is similar to the user in telecommunications, but with slight semantic differences. The difference is comparable to the difference between end-users and consumers in economics.
For instance, one can be a user of (and have an account on) a computer system, a computer network or have an e-mail account.
Names and passwords
An account is identified by a username (also referred to as a login name or as logon) and commonly a password.
A username is a unique name for each user (or sometimes a class of users such as 'Guest'). Usernames are usually based on a short string of alphanumeric characters. Depending on the policies of the particular service, the name may be chosen by the user or assigned by a system administrator.
Common choices are first name, initials, or some combination of first name, last name, initials and an arbitrary number. Sometimes the system dictates certain aspects in the choice of username. For example, the software requirements of wikis that use CamelCase mean that a username on those wikis must have two capitalized words joined without spaces (e.g. UserName; this is sometimes called a WikiName).
For security reasons, some systems require that a username contain digits and/or symbols (rather than only consisting of letters), although this requirement is more commonly associated with passwords.
Passwords are covered in a separate article.
Usernames are often also used as mailbox names in electronic mail addresses.
Semantics
A user account allows one to authenticate to system services. It also generally provides one with the opportunity to be authorized to access them. However, authentication does not automatically imply authorization.
Once the user has logged on, the operating system will often use an identifier such as an integer to refer to them, rather than their username. On Unix systems this is called the user identifier or user id.
Computer systems are divided into two groups based on what kind of users they have:
- single-user systems do not have a concept of several user accounts
- multi-user systems have it
Compare
References
- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is [Foldoc licenselicensed] under the GFDL.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
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