Web Site Passwords

"Signing up" for yet another something-social-facebook-wannabe website, I was struck by a random Thought Particle.


Why do all these websites ask me to enter a password twice?

No, seriously! I know the stock answers. Hell, I've written such web-signup forms myself, more times than I care to think about.

Am I that likely to misspell a password? And who would care, when all I have to do is click a link that says something like, "I forgot my password!" to get a new password sent to me. Or a reminder. Or my original password. Or some other way of recovering from my "spelling error".

So, tell me again, why are we typing these things twice inthe first place?