Sign-in practice: a pretend account to learn on

The parts of signing in

• An account is a site’s way of knowing it is you again. It is usually an email address or a user name, and a password that goes with it. Each site has its own accounts: an account on one site does not sign you in to another.
• Signing in (some sites say “log in”) is typing those two things and clicking the button. Making an account (“sign up”, “register”, “create account”) comes first, once. The two pages often look alike; the words on the button tell them apart.
• A password has to be typed letter for letter. A capital letter and a small letter count as different, and so does a space at the end. With an email address, capital letters usually do not matter.
• The dots in a password box are there so a person standing behind you cannot read it. Many sites have a “Show” button or a small eye next to the box that turns the dots into letters, so you can look before you click.
• When it does not match, the site says so and you type it again. Many sites empty the password box when that happens. Some lock an account for a while after several tries in a row.
• A longer password is harder for someone else to guess than a short one. A few words that have nothing to do with each other make a long password that can still be typed. Many sites ask for a capital letter, a number or a mark as well.
• A different password for each site means that if one site’s passwords get out, the others stay shut. Some people keep theirs on paper at home; some use a password manager, a program that keeps them behind one password.
• A code sent to your phone is a second step some sites ask for after the password. The code is for you to type into the site you are signing in to, and for nobody else. A person who calls or writes asking you to read a code to them is a reason to stop: that is a known way accounts get taken.
• “Forgot your password?” is there because forgetting is common. The site sends a link to your email, and the link opens a page to set a new one. Such a link often stops working after a short time. An email about a new password that you did not ask for is another matter: leave its link alone.
• “Keep me signed in” (or “Remember me”) leaves the account open on that device. On a computer other people use, at a library, a school or a job center, leave it without a check mark and sign out when you finish. Closing the tab may not sign you out.
• Your browser may offer to save a password when you sign in to a real site. On a device that is only yours, that is a choice many people make. On a computer other people use, the answer to give is no.
• Before typing a password on a real site, look at the address bar. The name of the site is the first part of the address. A page can be made to look like any site; the address is where the site it really is shows. Web page practice has a lesson on the address bar.

How the lessons work

• The pretend site is the light-colored box. The strip at its top shows the address of the pretend page; the rest is the page. The site is a library that does not exist. Its address ends in .example, a name set aside for examples, which no real site has.
• The pretend person of each lesson has one of six first names, an email address at mail.example, and a password the page puts together from two of eight plain words and two numbers. None of it is anyone’s.
• Only the step at hand answers. The step is written above the pretend site. If something else is clicked, or another box is typed in, the page says what it was, and the pretend site stays as it was. Nothing can be broken.
• The box the step asks for has a blue edge, and what to type is written once more right under it. A box is done the moment it holds what the step asks for, and the words of the step change to the next one. The password has to be letter for letter; the name and the email forgive capital letters.
• The password boxes here are plain boxes drawn as dots, not a browser’s own password boxes, so your browser has no password to offer to save.
• Lesson 3 asks, on purpose, for a password that does not match, so you can see what a site says and that nothing bad follows. Lesson 5 draws a pretend phone with the code on it. Lesson 6 draws a pretend mailbox with the email and its link.
• The page waits. There is no countdown, and taking a long time costs nothing. At the end it says how long the lesson took, from the first time the pointer went into the pretend site, and how many times something else was clicked or typed.
• “Start this lesson again” makes another pretend person and another password.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 32,000 lessons, half in English and half in Spanish, and walks through their 188,000 steps on a pretend site of its own, written apart from this page’s: that the thing each step asks for is on the screen when it is asked for, that using it changes something, that the step is said in full, and that nothing but the step’s own thing answers.

What this page does not do

• It is not a real site. No account is made anywhere, no text or email is sent, and the pretend account is gone when the lesson ends.
• It does not look like every sign-in page. Real ones differ: some ask for the email on one page and the password on the next, and some send the code by email or to an app.
• It does not teach buttons such as “Sign in with Google” or “Sign in with Apple”, passkeys, fingerprint or face sign-in, picture puzzles that ask if you are a person, security questions, or how to pick a password manager.
• It does not teach how to tell a scam from a real page beyond the lines above. Scam check is our page for that.
• It is not practice for the hand: Mouse and trackpad practice and Typing practice are.
• It does not keep your times or which lessons you have done, gives no certificate and makes no promise about how fast anyone will learn.
• It can be worked by keyboard (Tab, Enter and the space bar), but it has not been tried with a screen reader, a switch or an eye tracker.