Touch pad based authentication of users. In an embodiment, a user can touch (and move on) a touch pad in a specific pattern (e.g., up, down, etc.) to authenticate oneself. In an embodiment, a device translates the touch movement to the same set of characters as those a user can manually enter using a keyboard to authenticate oneself. As a result, the user can use the same password when accessing the same application from other systems which have only keyboards, but not touch pads.