User (computing)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A user in computing context is one who uses a computer system. Users may need to identify themselves for the purposes of accounting, security, logging and resource management. In order to identify oneself, a user has an account (a user account) and a user name, and in most cases also a password (see below). Users employ the user interface to access systems, and the process of identification is often referred to as log in.
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.
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.
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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.
User names 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 user name. 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
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.
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References
- This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.
