Everything’s Coming Up Rosen: I’ll take a pass – on passwords

Posted on 04 September 2014 by LeslieM

By Emily Rosen

ERosen424@aol.com

www.emilyrosen424.com

Am I the only person suffering from chronic password-itis?

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, 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 nine characters, including at least one number, and it must be “STRONG?”

So, do I care if someone uses my ID to get into Amazon, Walmart, Fandango or the Ritz Carlton (oh yeah!) or any one of a zillion 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 … out of 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 three and four 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 Others of which I used only once seven or more years ago, and, when I try to get back into the site, my password is no longer valid.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? five years? 10? Meanwhile, I consult the four-page printout on my desk for each “open sesame” to a website. I feel like I have retro-gressed to the dark ages.

Forget Google drones, 3-D printing, computer watches – get me one universal SECURE password. Puleeeze!

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