PASSWORD selection typically lacks sex appeal. The longer it is, and the more exotic the characters (punctuation marks, say), the less likely a brute-force effort to crack it is to succeed. But coming up with complex concatenations of alphanumeric symbols tends to be tedious and offputting, so relatively few people bother, plumping instead for simple, and easily guessable, words. Now, a firm from Cape Town, in South Africa, has released a free web tool designed to make strong password selection a little more tantalising.

Naked Password, a set of open-source JavaScript code and images that may be installed on any website, monitors a specified password-entry field in a web form. As the user types in a password, a reclining model dubbed Sally loses her garments a few chunkily bitmapped patches at a time. This turns password creation into a (rather racy) challenge. The goal is to use enough variety in the password—an exclamation point here, a hash there—to undress her completely.

Readers ought probably to resist Sally's charms while at work. Even though the salient portions of her exposed bosom are merely one pixel each, employers may not take kindly to such prurient use of company time, no matter how laudable the virtual voyeurs' motivation. Fortunately, the JavaScript code is stored in github, a popular repository for managing open-source projects. Github allows developers to "fork" code, creating a new independent project that shares another's files and features. This means that squeamish types who would rather play with something less salacious than Sally may do so.

Robust passwords are increasingly crucial in a world where ever more business is conducted online. And a game may convince users to pick a strong password where commands and exhortations fail. Better safe than sorry.