How can I stop the last character of my password from being displayed?

This issue is bigger than just logging into an iOS device. Enter a password for any service offered by Apple TV and there it is, displayed on the big screen, for everyone to see. One letter at a time, in slow motion, as you scroll to and select each character. My kids figured out the password to Netflix and iTunes just by watching me enter it a couple of times.

I need to do presentations of live secured applications from my ipad projected on a big screen in front of hundreds. They can't see my fingers on the device, but they sure can see each character as I type them.

This needs to be a toggle feature; the ipad is quickly becoming a business tool with higher security needs, and this is going to hold back business adoption.

OK, seems I was a bit aggressive in my previous reply and I got myself moderated!

All other systems that I have used over nearly 40 years blank the password field completely, so I think iOS is out of step in displaying characters, even if only for a second or so. As has been pointed out above, there are circumstances where the keyboard is not visible, but the content of the screen is. Under such circumstances, the option to hide the password completely would be very useful, and no amount of furtive keyboard enry will help.

I do think it's unhelpful when people suggest that asking for such a capability is somehow inappropriate. It's not that the suggestion is to enforce it, rather it's simply to give the option. Why wouldn't we all want these devices to work the way we'd like them to?

I definatly think that it neads to be created into an option, but then if you really wanted to have safty you would need to clean your screen, with some vegie oil some lemon juice a black light, and a basic password generator anyone with access to your device has acces to your passwords via your finger prints. You touch those keys may more times than others.

Please take your son to the closest major university and display this amazing ability to the head of the mathmatics and computer science departments. The number of possible combinations in a sequence of 6 single digit numbers is on the order of 1,000,000. A human with the ability to deduce this is remarkable indeed considering that it would take about 277 hours assuming one guess per second with no repeats. Now that's some calculating!

Thats not the point. Though some of us may have bought ipads for the novelty of them, other (like me) use them to cunduct real buisness everyday. I don't have a single password other than the one for my iphone lock screen that is less than 15 characters long and not randomly generated. Yet on my iphone it doesn't display and my password has been the same for 3 months (since i received it) while i must memorize a new password for my ipad every three days from friends and even total strangers figuering out my password. I bought these devices because i sometimes handle very sensitive information, and it needs to remain under lock and key. The fact that this issue exists has made me disconnect my ipad from the sources of this sensitive material, and while i have an ipad 1 with ios 5.0.1 i will not buy an ipad 2 because of this issue. It is one thing for passwords on the internet with the small screen on the iphone. It is another thing to give another person an all access pass after they discreetly look over your schoulder once or twice.

"while i must memorize a new password for my ipad every three days from friends and even total strangers figuering out my password. "

???

You have to memorize it when everyone else knows exactly what it is by simply glancing at your iPad from across the room?

Why not turn the iPad so others cannot see while you are entering the password?

Why not set a pass phrase instead of a simple 4 digit Passcode?

Sorry , but open your eyes and see what going on round you!

This is a big problem! We are not allowed to use iPAD in lecture or presentation because of password security. This issue is making more than 1500 lectors NOT to use iPAD in our University. It should be very easy for Apple just make it optional to hide or not hid passwords last typed letter. I think Apple not realized yet that how big this problem is. I hope they will soon get an eye on this security issue.

Strong password or not would not help when some one can record your presentation.

Okay, I'm not saying that adding a feature to mask the password on the iPad would be a bad thing. In fact it probably would be beneficial, if enough people asked for it. You'd have to communicate that concern to Apple, however, and not a user forum. It would be useful as one person pointed out, while it is connected to a projector.

It's your claims that are quite interesting. I also use an iPad for some work related tasks; however, I do not utilize it to store anything sensative because that's not what an iPad was designed for. That's what my laptop with encryption is designed to do.

Here's a quote from your last post:

"I don't have a single password other than the one for my iphone lock screen that is less than 15 characters long and not randomly generated. Yet on my iphone it doesn't display and my password has been the same for 3 months (since i received it) while i must memorize a new password for my ipad every three days from friends and even total strangers figuering out my password."

If I'm correct in reading your post, you are in contact with friends and strangers on the order of at least every three days, who can figure out a 15 digit randomly generated password. If anyone can ever, without utilizing some type of social engineering, guess a 15 digit randomly generated password, then you must reside in a community of mathematical savants the likes of which the world has never seen. As I pointed out to a previous poster, the number of random possibilities in a group of only 6 digits is 1,000,000, so someone being able to figure out a 15 character randomly generated password, which I assume also contains alpha characters, is quite impossible. And really, who would go to all that trouble to gain access to your iPad? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I have the same question about the password being displayed character by character as i log into my bank account or a secure site on my iphone. i am not concerned about people looking over my shoulder but i am concerned about someone hacking into my phone and capturing my password as i type it in. Similarly to someone hacking a computer and capture the characters as it is typed in. I am not great with computers so i am a little concerned with this as well.

So my question to this group is: is it possible for my iphone to be hacked and that some can see what i am typing for my passwords when I log into different sites secure sites requiring a password? If it is not a concern than great, if it is i would really like to know.

Meg, I think people do realise that this is simply a forum hosted by Apple, but they also know that Apple monitor these forums. They also know that occasionally Apple staff do respond to issues rasied directly to customers. So it's not completely accurate to say that "you're not talking to Apple here", perhaps better to say that there are better options in taking this up to Apple.

That said, this thread is more than a year old, so I guess if anybody from Apple is reading it, they're steadfastly ignoring it!

I find it incredible that this has not been resolved. Apple is clearly trying to get the iPad into the corporate world as a full replacement for laptops, and that strategy has been pretty successful so far. As more and more people use the iPad as their only portable computing device, the aspect of displaying your password in a corporate presentation is likely to be of concern to more and more IT security people. Surely a quick tweak of IOS to make this a configurable option to display or not display would not be too difficult? Once that's done, the policy can be enforced via MobileIron or similar and corporate IT will fully embrace Apple!

This needs to be an option to only show the asterisk. This is poor design for the use case where I'm working on a flight sitting in coach in a middle seat. The person on either side could easily see my password on this high def screen that is much larger than an iPhone. I travel frequently an everyone carries iPads. Give users the option. This is a no brainier.

As a teacher who uses AppleTV every lesson this is a major irritation, having to turn off airplay just to put passwords in is a major break in the flow of the delivery. I have multiple accounts across many sites and cant simple login before hand as pupils discussions dictate the direction of the lesson. It's got to be a simle fix. I have already entered my request with Apple just venting frustration on a simple fix to a big security flaw. No other device I use does this.