Forgot Password?

Passwords. A shiver just went down your spine, I can feel it.  What can be more frustrating about our fabulous connected age than the creation and remembrance of the dreaded password? Your computer crashing is worse but hopefully that doesn't happen often, while the creation and constant changing of passwords is an ongoing nightmare.

Back when online passwords first poked their ugly heads above the newly planted grass of the digital world they were simple creatures. Six to twelve letters, nothing fancy, easy to remember. Your dog's name, the street you grew up on, your favourite colour or sports team. A cousin to the four letter numerical password or PIN required for ATM's and phone banking. It was all so easy back then. Remember?  One password seemed to do the trick for all your needs and there weren't many needs. Then they started to evolve, these simple beasts, fed and watered by the growth of online shopping and all those damn loyalty cards. Collect points with us! Collect points with us! the stores and airlines screamed but first...sign up online with your new card and make up a password for your account. Everything we wanted to do online to make our lives easier, to cut down on mail or make certain jobs quicker required a password. With all the online access came the hackers and with them, identity theft and fear. The beast is now fully grown, stomping through our backyards, uprooting shrubs and scaring the pets and making us bar the door. Passwords now need to include a capital letter, a number and symbol. They can't be one you have used before, they should be changed every few months and worst of all, the beast shouts at us, its hot, stinking breath in our face...DON'T WRITE THEM DOWN!  Are you kidding me?? Ain't never gonna happen, folks.

How I think the password
beast looks

I have to write them down. I just updated a list of all my passwords and there are one hundred of them, give or take, and the list is growing as I write this. Passwords are multiplying like rabbits. The request for a password is so commonplace and never ending that I find myself quickly making up one to get through some sort of booking process or purchase and not writing it down. Oh, I'll remember, I say to myself. Nope. So now, as commonplace as the request for a log in with a password is, just as commonplace is the little phrase in parentheses (Forgot Password?) That's a double edged sword, that little phrase.  You used to be able to recover your password from a clue you gave yourself but no more. If you forget your password now we all know you get emailed a link to make a new one. The useful side of the blade. Which is great when I want access to something at that moment but it then requires me to remember the new password, hopefully write it down and even more hopefully manage to get it onto my constantly updated list. Ouch, that's the side I get cut on.

So, why not just use the "forgot Password" link every time, you ask? Why bother to write it down? Every now and again the reset link for the password doesn't work or doesn't appear in time, or at all, in your email inbox and then you're done for.  An insanely frustrating scenario is when I am trying to log in to an account with the info from my crib sheet and I receive an "incorrect username or password" message. I have to succumb to the "forgot password" link, wait for the link in my email, reset my password and then get an error code telling me something has gone wrong and I must call their 1-800 number to sort it out. Unless its something crucial I'm trying to do, at this point I usually get up and walk away.  Then there is The Loop. The place where you can't log in with the information you have and you can't seem to reset it because your email address is already being used in the system. Yes, I know, its being used... by me! Again, the only resolution is to go back to the frustrating phone calls with their lists of "options".  Listen carefully as the options have recently been changed. Argh.

The solution to all this agony would seem to be simple. Use the same password as much as possible even though it's not considered safe. I do that but not all websites take the same configuration of numbers and letters. One letter wrong and you are screwed, there is no autocorrect on passwords. Some sites demand I change my password and snottily tell me not to use one I've used before, They've come up against lazy farts like me too many times, they seem to say. Don't piss off the beast.  I use the "save password" option on my computer when I can and save them to the Cloud which leaves me more vulnerable to computer hackers. I could disconnect from the online world, use the phone more, spend my time picking through options on those awful phone systems, pay my bills at the bank with their two tellers and lines of geriatric clients, send stuff through the postal service, allowing five BUSINESS days for delivery...roll the clock back. I should quit collecting points and the freebies and perks that go with it. Get in the car and drive to the stores looking for stuff the old fashioned way. That might solve the problem but I can't do that. I love my online world and its not going away any time soon.  

 An article posted recently on the site Gigaom.com , tackles the subject of passwords and everyone's hatred of them from the user as well as the tech end. Passwords are on their way out, to be replaced by facial, eye, voice and fingerprint recognition.  Until that happens or the apocalypse comes and all the computer systems crash you will find me updating my list, cursing my memory and listening closely to the options that have changed.... with one eye on the beast.