I’ll Take a Pass – On Passwords

Am I the only person suffering from chronic Passworditis ???  When, where and who is the person who will come up with one single way to ID oneself in the cloud. Surely the technology is already there. Is it possible that every time Obama goes into a new website that he needs to establish a user ID and then come up with a password – (how many times can he use POTUS 1600?)  which must be case sensitive, have at least 9 characters including at least one number, and it must be “STRONG “????

So—do I care if someone uses my ID to get into Amazon, or Walmart, or Fandango or the Ritz Carlton  (oh yeah!) or  any one of a zilliion websites I surf regularly? I am sick and tired of inventing passwords- and changing my “user ID” as ‘they’ recommend doing  every so often. And what’s worse – if I don’t write them down immediately, poof !  Outa my head and I have to start all over.  Time magazine this week is touting all kinds of “cloud”  statistics – but I wonder if anyone ever compiled  the number of WASTED hours spent on filling out the information requested in order to browse most websites?  And then you make one eensy weensy typo- and bang! you have to start all over again. If, like me,  you have fat fingers that mistakenly wander to adjacent letters on the keyboard,  fergetaboutit – You’re doing this 3 and 4 times over.

The “they”s  have me coming and going – and “they” know everything there is to know about me – already.  This past week, every time I go into my email, I get pictures of hammocks, shoe racks, Italy, designer sheets and – well – you don’t have to know everything – but those  were my most recent searches. 

So  I wrote down my latest password for www.XYZ – It’s on a scrap of paper somewhere  in the jungle of my desk. But where?  Ah yes- there it is, finally.  NOW  what do I do with it?  What do YOU do with yours? Okay- I’m feeling risky—and I’m telling! I go into my WORD DOCS and simply add – (in alphabetized order) the new site and password. I have four single spaced pages of passwords – some of which I used only once, recently.  Others of which I used only once 7 or more  years ago, and when I try to get back into the site, my password is no longer valid. Here I go again.

Ah, but then I’m always changing one or more – and back into my DOCS  I go. The clock is ticking. More time wasted.   So I print out the entire four pages – and Computer be damned – I find one of those old fashioned things called pencils – cross out the old password and do a write-in  with the new one.

What happened to fingerprints, voice ID, retina recognition, or whatever new technology is surely in the pipelines? One year away? 5 years? 10? Meanwhile, I consult the 4 page printout on my desk for each “open sesame” to a website. I feel like I have retrogressed to the dark ages.

Forget Google drones, three-D printing, computer watches – get me  one universal SECURE  password. Puleeeze!

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