In this instance (password verification) why would you want to strip tags? I'm pretty sure that if someone entered the following into the password field: <strong>my<br>pass<br>word</strong>, even if "mypassword" was correct you would still want to fail because the supplied password is incorrect:
"<strong>my<br>pass<br>word</strong>" != "mypassword"

Or am I missing something?

__________________
salathe@php.net