CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

NOTE This chapter uses Windows as an example of user accounts,
passwords, and groups, but understand that all operating systems—without
exception—use user accounts, passwords, and groups.
User Accounts
Every user account has a user name and a password. A user name is a text
string that identifies the user account assigned to a system. Three examples of
possible user names are “Mike1” or “john.smith” or
“some.person@hotmail.com.” Associated with every user name is a
password: a unique key known only by the system and the person using that
user name. This user name and password are encrypted on the system—and
only those with a user name and password are allowed access to the system
via the login process.
Every Windows system stores the user accounts as an encrypted database
of user names and passwords. Windows calls each record in this database a
local user account (see Figure 13-1).
Figure 13-1 Local user accounts are stored on the system.
User accounts in our always-on Internet environment get complicated
quickly. On Chrome OS, the only way to get the full experience is by logging
in with a Google account. The opposite is true on Linux, where local user