Secure Pen Drives, the Dummies Version

A couple of our staff (regardless of what "A Way With Words" might pretend, that means "two")  are amateur linguists. Both, as you might guess from the slight snark above, lean more to the prescriptivist than the descriptivist end of the linguistic spectrum. It will come as no surprise, then to find that one of them greenlighted returning DotD Colby Stream and his half-wit Techwalla..com answer to the question, "What is a PIN Drive?"

First, however, we need to ask, how many of you readers out there pronounce the name of the writing utensil that uses ink as "pin"? Show of hands? Yes, we thought so: quite a few of you. Which means that Stream's attempt to answer this question would have been hella more useful if he had realized that the OQ wanted to know what a pen drive is... and that's just another name for a flash drive. Heck, Colby danced all around the subject in his intro...

"Portable USB flash drives present a constant security concern. If you lose the drive, anybody who finds it can access your personal or business information. For this eventuality, developers created the USB flash PIN drive."

Stream's only problem with that statement is that the developers never called this a "USB flash PIN drive," because that doesn't make any sense. Sure, there are a few of these doodads on the market, but the official name is typically something like Flash Key or Encrypted Storage Drive.
That didn't stop Colby, however, from leveraging that "communications" degree of his and making stuff up, rubbish like,

"Generally, a USB flash drive PIN will range from seven to 15 characters..."

...which he misread, since the Aegis password – not a PIN, since it's alphanumeric – ranges up to 16 characters, not fifteen. Colby also "informs" his readers that,

"You must buy a flash drive specifically labeled as 'PIN Drive.' Otherwise, it may contain a password or other encryption but it won't be a PIN drive. Many companies provide PIN drives..."

More bull there, since we found no company that calls their password-protected flash drive a PIN drive. No, Colby wanted his fifteen bucks and he wasn't above making up crap to get it, which is a shame because 1) the correct answer was a darned sight easier: "You spelled 'pen' wrong, dummy!" and 2) the content editor was every bit as clueless and/or venal as Stream. Only Colby gets a Dumbass of the Day award, though.

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