“Wrong Password” blinks the screen in glee.
Aaaaaargh! There I go. Another password forgotten. One more try. Same result. The final one — I know this one could be the end of the road, and take my time, racking my memory, and enter the one I think is it, but with a sinking heart. “Wrong password. You are now locked out.” That's it. I am now banished, and I need to go through a little bit of torture to be able to have the pleasure and privilege of getting back in.
The story goes that Kasim, after entering the cave and loading his horse with all the jewels he could gather, forgets the key words — “Open Sesame”. Such a simple password, and he couldn't remember it to save his life! So, how are we expected to cope with all the complexities of our multi-password world?
In the early days, when we had to remember just one or two passwords, it was actually quite cool. Conventional wisdom goes that the first girlfriend becomes your wife, failing which she becomes your password. I've checked this theory out with quite a few people and believe me, it's truer than you would think. I'm quite sure it works the same way for women too.
All this is fine as far as it is just a password or two. Soon you start hitting critical mass. You now have accounts for e-mail, bank, the credit card, the airlines, Facebook, Linkedin. So what's the big deal, just maintain the same password for everything and that's the end of the matter, right? Wrong! One day, when you log on happily, feeling superior to these damn machines, they suddenly want you to change your password. It's all in the name of security and in our best interests — keep changing your password every three months. Sure, will do — anything to stay connected.
But it doesn't end there. Now the password has to conform to certain rules. It has to be long. You need some numeric characters in it. You need to include some of the funnies like # and &. There is even a strengthometer sometimes — a bar that measures the strength of your password. And this one can really make you feel inadequate until you hit upon a horrendously complicated password with all kinds of funny and easily forgettable characters and achieve the “strong” rating.
So now we are deep into the muck. From a time when the only user ID and password I had to remember were Venkatshankar and Aishwarya_Rai (remember the girlfriend theme?), I have moved well beyond critical mass. And with about a zillion passwords to remember, you get three chances to guess the right one on each login! Mostly, you do not. And then what? You click on the most clicked on link of all times — “Forgot Password? Click here.” And then the password is sent to you. Except that, it is sent to your mail so that it is secure. And guess what — you need to remember the mail password to get to your inbox. And so it goes.
There is another infuriating phenomenon for a while now — all the user IDs have been taken. Now, when I try to get the monster to accept my name, it is taken. Taken! With a weird name like mine, I thought there would be too few of us in the world – but puzzlingly, Venkatshankar1 to Venkatshankar1000 are all taken — including all the variants with underscore, hash and @. So now, apart from passwords, I have to remember a few hundred user IDs along the lines of FGS358_VL8$3. And don't even get me started on T-PIN and related scams. Forgot password? Obviously! Forgot User ID? All the time! In fact, forget the whole online thing — I think I'll just leg it to wherever and transact with a human being of some sort.
I know people who seem to have it much easier than me. Maybe, they have a memory like an elephant. Maybe, they store all their passwords in one file. The catch is, this file is probably password protected. And since your entire online security resides in that file, chances are that you follow the usual best practices and set a suitably convoluted password for that file — in which case you are already back on the old slippery slope!
So where do we go from here? Being the paranoid kind, I am getting weighed down by my conviction that this is a conspiracy by the machines. This password racket is the machine world's way of ultimately locking me out of my bank, my credit card, my airline, my social network and so on, until I am alone and isolated. You may scoff, but if you do, I recommend that you watch Terminator and Matrix.
I am tired now and shutting my laptop. I only hope that tomorrow morning, I can remember my Power On password and my mail ID and password so that I can send this message out in the hope that it reaches someone who can save the world.
(The writer's email ID is venkat@peepuladvisors.com)
