It is that simple: don't provide any information to a potential cracker other than that an attempt either succeeded or failed.

Imagine this response from a web site: "You attempted to sign in with username joe.blog@somemail.com, but unfortunately there is no such user registered. Please make use of this opportunity to register now."

Or this: "You attempted to sign in with the valid registered username joe.blog@somemail.com, but unfortunately you submitted an incorrect password. Silly person - please try again."

Both (contrived) responses indicate whether or not there is such a user currently registered on the site. That's too much information and entirely unnecessary.

Forgot your username? Tough.

Seems like they exaggerated the size... which I didn't pick up on - thanks for pointing that out.

A 3.5-inch "stiffy" is better than an 8-inch "floppy", though both are as relevant to the average computer user nowadays as a bicycle is to a fish.

FTFA: The first floppy disk was 9 inches in diameter and very "floppy".

At my first job in the late '80's I worked on old Honeywell TDC4500's in a petrochemical plant in South Africa. I think they stopped making those machines in 1979, but due to sanctions and budget restrictions we kept using those trusty workhorses, which used 9 inch floppies.

This was round about the time that the 3.5 inch floppy came out, which was less "floppy". In South Africa we referred to them (innocently) as "stiffies" - something that never caught on in the rest of the world...