User (computing)

A user in computing context is one who uses a computer system. To use it, they have an account, and a user name, and peruse the user interface.

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.

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.

A user account refers to the means by which a user can access (often log in to) a system. For instance, a one can have an account on a computer system, a computer network or an e-mail account.

Users need accounts in order to be able to authenticate to system services. It also generally provides them with the opportunity to be authorized to access them (though not always). Users may need to identify themselves for accounting, security, logging and resource management.

Contents

1 Names and passwords 2 Special users 3 Compare 4 References 5 External link

Names and passwords

An account is identified by a user name (also referred to as a login name or as logon) and commonly a password.

A username is a unique name for each user. User names 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 user name 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 user name 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.

Once the user has logged on the operating system will often use an identifier, e.g. an integer, to refer to them rather than their user name.

User names are often also used as mailbox names in electronic mail addresses.

Special users

Computer security is usually tied to user management. A particular user called the superuser (in practice commonly Administrator or root) is given complete access to the system, while normal users have limitations on what they can do.

Sometimes dummy "users" are created for particular computer programs that need to access restricted features as a part of their normal functioning or, in the opposite case, for programs that are likely to cause problems and must have access to the system restricted as much possible. The latter is the case for web servers, that are often used by unauthorised users as a way to gain access to the system.

Compare

• Luser

References

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.