“Forgot Your Password?” or “Time to change your Password,” or “Password, please?” are questions guaranteed to mess with your productivity and incite password rage. I call it password insanity. Password Password Password! How many passwords can a person remember?
But there’s more. After you find or remember your password, you need to enter your PIN. After all that, they want your user ID.
Why do we require so many passwords and PINs, and must we keep changing them? And how are we, as seniors, famous for losing our glasses and car keys regularly, expected to remember the numerous passwords and user IDs we are burdened with? There are just too many usernames and passwords!
I have an address book that is not so much filled with phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses anymore, but instead, passwords. These are current or expired, crossed or whited out with new ones noted, PINS and user IDs included – all growing in sheer volume.
Being prompted to change one’s password, pin or user ID just at the point where we finally remember them is an invitation to headbanging. And how on earth are we supposed to retain all this information when we are urged to change all three regularly?
In addition to the frustration of having to create new passwords on regularly, trying different combinations and being refused until you finally get it right, you then have to recall which one worked! The password was not long enough or required a capital letter or a number or special symbol. Hopefully, you wrote them all down and saved the right one… or did you?
Your Address Book Becomes a Password Encyclopedia
I know that if you are a business person, you probably have a binder full of passwords. When traveling, and even before you pack your socks or underwear, you need to ensure that information accompanies you. That binder contains the keys to your kingdom: banking passwords, courier user IDs, auction passwords & transport user names. Computer login information, an exhaustive list of internet information, all needed to access any information belonging to you is contained in that little book.
Questioning the Need for Password Protection?
I am an admitted victim of password rage and believe use of passwords has exceeded the need. But could I be wrong? What do I really know about the dangers of having one’s password hacked? Is all this emphasis on security really necessary or has caution gone overboard? How real are the risks that someone might want to log into an online course in which you’re currently enrolled and take the exams for you? How prevalent is it that miscreants might log into your courier account and book a pick-up? or a pizza?
Then from one security company comes this advice:
“Users should never write down their passwords, as that makes it easier for the passwords to be stolen and used by someone else.” Never write down or record a password? WuT? I have a 3-ring binder filled with pages of companies I use, along with user IDs, pins, and passwords. And need I reiterate about seniors and their capacity to lose or misplace things on a regular basis? There has to be a better way…
Enter: The Cloud. The Cloud has its advantages. It remembers your passwords so you don’t have to. But is it really secure? Unfortunately, no, even the Cloud has issues.
Has the Internet Become the New Frontier for Theft?
Data stored in the Cloud can be accessed. Servers can crash. Irreplaceable pictures can disappear. Weak passwords can be accessed.
Security professionals caution us not to use the same password for multiple accounts and services. Doing so can open an individual up to hacking and access to all your accounts. Thieves count on the fact that many people can’t remember more than one password and will use that one password liberally. Once discovered, that one password is THE key that will unlock volumes of private data.
Hackers are busy 24/7. More directed to companies, the following article highlights the horrors when a data breach happens:
How Can We Protect Ourselves?
Activating 2-factor authentication, where you provide a phone number at which you can be reached, is recommended. If there is a suspected breach of your account, the possession factor verifies that you really are you and warns of any suspicious activity.
Then there are Password Management Services. These will generate hard-to-guess passwords and save them to devices frequently used to access cloud storage services. Password “managers” will store your passwords for you. Yes, you read that right – now there are “password managers.” Key Pass, Sticky Password, Roboform, and 1Password are just a few worth investigating.
It is also recommended that you back up your data to local sources. This won’t be much comfort if your bank account is accessed, but saving all your other data if the Cloud is compromised will help you sleep at night. Keep critical data close to your place of operations and back up to those very sources.
Know that software and hardware failure can contribute to data breaches in the Cloud, as can user error.
How Best to Secure Your Data In the Cloud?
Security experts recommend using Cloud Services that encrypt data and use strong passwords. Five of the more secure Cloud storage options are Dropbox, iCloud, iDrive, Spider Oak, and Microsoft One Drive. All Cloud storage companies provide different features as well as varying fee schedules, but some are free.
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
We are now online-dependent for basically everything: banking, email, socializing, news and chat rooms. Then there’s shopping, educational courses and general information seeking.
Few can imagine living without the Internet; when it goes down occasionally, we are lost. So, we must weigh the benefits alongside the realities of password rage and password insanity, heed the security experts, and do what we can to protect our data. Yes, there are too many usernames and passwords to remember, but consider the alternative and be grateful for the Cloud, which is there to assist.
As data breaches scale up, so too must our determination to be protected.
So please excuse me as I’m off to interview a “password manager” and begin backing up my data right here, right now, in my home office.