What is the point of a "miner" password when participating in mining pools?

[gigabytecoin]

I don't know why I have the option to create so many individial "workers/miners" for starters...

When creating an individual worker for a mining pool (like deepbit.net or btcmine.com) I am asked to create a separate password for that miner (so that I can submit shares using my username and password presumably?)

Why would I bother making a difficult to guess password for that miner in particular? Don't I want other people trying to crack my password and mine bitcoins for me through the pool if they so choose?

Why is there a password at all basically is my question?

[1715243514]

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[1715243514]

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[eturnerx]

I don't know why I have the option to create so many individial "workers/miners" for starters...

When creating an individual worker for a mining pool (like deepbit.net or btcmine.com) I am asked to create a separate password for that miner (so that I can submit shares using my username and password presumably?)

Why would I bother making a difficult to guess password for that miner in particular? Don't I want other people trying to crack my password and mine bitcoins for me through the pool if they so choose?

Why is there a password at all basically is my question?

Creating many workers means that we can track each ones: track record, up/down status individually
Yeah I never really got that separate password deal either... (different for worker and main account).

I guess the password thing dates back to solo-mining via the Bitcoin client in server mode. There's much more that interface to the Bitcoin client exposes that should be protected.

[gigabytecoin]

Yes this is what I was thinking too... perhaps just a remnant from the good old solo mining days.

As pools become larger and more profitable for their owners, I am sure these "little things" will be more streamlined.

[Dobrodav]

Access to your main password (on site), gives access to your "change adress" options.
Access to passwords of your miners is useless for abuser (unless you put it same as main).
In theory, miners password are more ease to obtain by abuser.

Therefore, you can use the same password for all of your miners, but you should avoid to use that password to access web-interface  of the pool.

[Mononofu]

The question was what's the point of having a miner password at all.

Worst case, somebody will mine for you 

[Dobrodav]

Well, to decrease probability that you will mine on somebody else due to miners name match  

Assume: How many miners have name :
1;
2;
deepbeat;
new miner;
etc  ?

But, off curse you right.  Assigning new unique miner names  is done by almost all pools.

[benjamindees]

Most pools use some type of scoring system.  So, someone could "mine for you" and just submit bogus results to drive down your score.

[error]

At least one pool (Eligius) does not use worker passwords.