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User names and passwords working my last nerve

So here's the latest entry on my unofficial list of Undignified Mess They Expect People Over 50 to Have to Fool With: online accounts.

It wasn't so bad when it was just a few accounts we had to fool with -- bank, credit card, utilities; Amazon.com and a maybe a few other retail-therapy accounts; and of course a social-media website or two.

But now, we're expected to register for an online account to even utilize websites that teach us how to yodel or weave baskets. So we have to once again come up with an identity and a password, maybe even a security question to which we may or may not remember our own answer.

To add insult to injury, we are expected to dutifully register a different identity and password for each and every account AND recall all of said information.

I do confess to being somewhat lazy. I've used the same identity for multiple accounts, and recycled the same three or four passwords just to preserve what's left of my sanity.

What I find especially wearying is creating and typing in those passwords, which for security reasons can't be short and sweet. You have to have at least one capital letter. You have to have at least one number. You have to have at least one of what I call the "cuss word substitute" symbols: @#$%&* and so forth. The password has to be at least eight letters long. It has to include your childhood dog's name and what you have for breakfast every day and how many old wads of gum are stuck under your desk and the color of the ratty college T-shirt you wear to bed.

I get exhausted typing or sharing my work email address. Typing in an account password is about 50 shades worse, especially when trying to do it in a hurry on a cellphone. I wish the doggone website would at least give me some credit for my effort instead of making me start over like I'm some lime-green school kid. But -- riiiiight, that would make it even easier for the hackers who seem to be able to so easily hack anyway. (Even when we manage to avoid being duped into giving out email passwords to freelance crooks who pretend to be us, saying we're stranded in Spain and need money... somebody's breaking into the computer records of entities that hold all our personal information.)

During a visit to see my sister earlier this year, I noticed her long list of account information meticulously typed up and taped to the side of something or other in the home-office area of her bedroom. I remembered how I'd once meticulously typed up all my account information. Then I remembered why I stopped typing and resorting to legal-pad paper and pen: The passwords change too often.

There are two reasons for password changes. One, some websites strongly urge and in some cases require users to change their passwords periodically for security reasons. Two, and more likely, we forget our passwords. My usual scenario: I go to a website I haven't visited in a couple months. The ID works, but the password doesn't. I go through the three or four passwords I've been recycling. None works. Then I remember it was one of those sites at which I'd forgotten my password before and, due to being prohibited from using the previous password, I had to craft a whole new one. I no longer remember that password, either. So I plunk the "Forget your password?" link and type in my email, after which I may or may not receive an email bearing a link on which I must click to go back to the website and change my password. After which, having meticulously typed in a new password twice, I'm told I can't reuse an old password. And so forth and so on.

What with all the online-account requirements, it would be interesting to see who has the most online accounts. (If you Google keywords "Guinness book most online accounts," you'll discover that you can even sign up for an online account at GuinnessWorldRecords.com. Unfortunately, if you look down at the "People also ask" section of Google, you'll see the question, "What is the world record for the longest [incidence of flatulence]?" Worse, you'll click on it.)

Again ... the indignity of it all. But I suppose all this identity and password stuff beats the alternatives: mandatory implantation of radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips in some possibly undignified part of the body. Returning to showing up in person and lining up to do business or pay bills. Or simply being low-hanging hacker fruit.

Therefore (sigh), I suppose I'll shut up and try to recall that yodeling-website password.

Please do not use this email to tell me you're stranded in Spain ...

hwilliams@arkansasonline.com

Style on 08/19/2018

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