AOL only reads first 8 characters of 16-character passwords

AOL's Password Puzzler

A reader wrote in Friday with an interesting observation: When he went to access his AOL.com account, he accidentally entered an extra character at the end of his password. But that didn't stop him from entering his account. Curious, the reader tried adding multiple alphanumeric sequences after his password, and each time it logged him in successfully.

It turns out that when someone signs up for an AOL.com account, the user appears to be allowed to enter up to a 16-character password. AOL's system, however, doesn't read past the first eight characters.