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Passing on the word

Thursday, September 23, 2021
Passing on the word

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m not sure how many passwords I have left in me.

I remember in those innocent, early days of the innerwebs having the password “password,” and that was fine because nobody wanted in my AOL account anyway.

But that was 1998. We have now “progressed” 23 years and it takes a complicated password, three security questions, and a third party authentification via text or email to get into my accounts. And I still get hacked more often than I’d like to admit.

As things tend to do with innocence, the past two decades have corrupted the simplicity and for people like me that spells h-a-c-k-e-r-s-d-e-l-i-g-h-t.

Early passwords required no creativity or fear, you just looked to your right, then typed “clock” and you were good to go. Now these internet people require letters, numbers, geometric symbols, wing dings and an algebra equation to get set up, and if you don’t write it down right away and correctly, well, kiss your Saturday goodbye.

And, if you’re like me and let your computer remember it so you don’t have to write it down, well, I don’t have to tell you the pitfalls of that business. It means you can’t access that account on any other computer or phone, and if you need to change that password, chances are you can’t remember it when you want to change it and they ask for your last password.

Do computers really make life easier? Or, are they just Chinese finger prisons?

I only bring this up because I worked from home for almost a year, and had my work computer with me. When that one went back to work, I hooked up my home computer and lo and behold, couldn’t remember the password to even even get past the first bridge troll.

I finally managed to remember the password I chose for that computer - I didn’t write it down - and once inside couldn’t access my bank account or any of the other accounts I use often because, you guessed it, I’d changed them a dozen times since that computer had been powered up.

I realized in that moment I was running out of passwords that I can remember, but hackers cannot guess.

So, if you can guess my passwords at this point you filthy-mouthed potential hackers, I suppose you deserve to deal with my hot mess of a Facebook page