Our world is filled with passwords. Everyone wants us to have one. Sure, theres the bank and credit cards. Ive also got passwords for Barbie.com (it would not let me choose IhateBarbie as my password), for Swiss Air, the News and Observer, iTunes, Facebook, my realtors website. I call Disneys employee stock purchase line every April to ask for my password. (Theres always a long wait on hold, so I know Im not alone) I even have one to log into Bills computer.
It is simply impossible to remember all these passwords. And its not for a lack of trying.
Sure, you can always jump through a few hoops to retrieve your password. Usually. Yesterday I tried to log onto a website I havent used in several years but couldnt retrieve my password because the system emailed it to an old email address. I wrote and asked for help.
Honestly, Im a little annoyed by the response I got. Yes, I was sent the obligatory temporary log-in and password that I can change to be more unforgettable. Fine. But included in the email was a curt line about not losing it this time. Alright, it actually said please keep a record of this information for future reference. Read between the lines and it says to me: I dont care if since the last time you logged into our website you watched your mother die, closed out her estate, decided your career path was all wrong, became a stay-at-home-mom, moved to another country. Dont ask me again to do my job as webmaster and help you log into a website that has very little reason to be so dang secure as to require a log-in and password.
Maybe Im being a little harsh. Maybe yesterday she got flooded with nothing but requests from people who lost their passwords and changed their emails and had no other way to log onto the site. Maybe yesterday the latte machine at her Starbucks was broken so she was running on a little less caffeine than is optimal. Maybe yesterday she was feeling fat and had to change clothes several times while getting dressed for work. Maybe she had the epiphany that she just doesnt like people or her job and dislikes being asked to do something that might interfere with Facebooking while at her desk.
I dont know what the reason is. And you can come up with your own equally ridiculous list of why I let her response get under my skin. (Maybe I spent the day scanning dozens of documents to send to the movers for our international relocation. Yes. Maybe I spent time re-booking our entire house hunting trip. Yes. Maybe I woke up to find snow on the ground in mid-April. Yes. Maybe I simply wanted to log onto this website, pay my dues, and find out about the local group in the area where Im moving. Yes, that too.)
I will eventually bother to log in and to change my password. Ill even make a note of it. But I wont promise that I wont lose it. Or forget it. Or change my email address before the next time I ask that it be sent to me. And heaven help the next person who suggests I keep a record of it. No shit.
Please let me know if you figure out why sites on which you pay your bills (utility, etc) which wo’t let you withdraw or change anything, just pay your bill, require a password. And particularly a password meeting their strict complexity rules. If someone else really wants to log onto my account and pay my bill with their money, I say they should be able to do so. They should provide a non-mandatory field on the login page where if you want, your password appears once you enter your user name (a) if you forgot it it’s right there (b)for use by generous strangers to pay your bills