Consider the OTP. Affectionately known as the one-time password. Or, alternatively, the original trigger for pain.
It probably makes people’s lives simpler. It gives the OTP generator in our banks something to do. I imagine the generator as a wizened man in a long white beard whose hobby is frightening children waiting at bus stops with a well-placed ‘boo’ in their ears. After sterling service for many years generating three-time passwords and two-time ditto, he has now made it to the top of the profession. For one time.
Actually, the OTP wheeze is a many-splendoured thing. It gives the illusion of protecting our money, our honour, our future. And it gives the message-generator the excuse to send us another message, this one warning us against sharing the OTP with friend or foe.
I haven’t had the courage to share the OTP with a random stranger just to see what might happen. Don’t forget that even in the OTP world, context is everything. If I told you, say, 4296, would you know what to do with it?
My problem is two-fold. Firstly, my phone and I don’t always share the same space, and when an OTP arrives with the fanfare of a groom riding to his wedding, I rush about like the priest, discovering he is in the wrong place at the wrong time. When my wife hears my desperation as I run around the house screaming ‘OTP, OTP’ at the top of my voice, she hides herself in a cupboard till the storm blows over.
My ears have a version of long-sightedness. I can hear the neighbour’s phone announcing a message, the car backfiring near a faraway metro station, but I can’t hear my phone nearby. By the time I locate it under a book (why do phones hide under books?) and find the OTP, I discover that the time limit has expired and the OTP needs to be re-sent. Sometimes I need to start the whole process from the start.
The second problem is how deeply the OTP philosophy has been embedded in my daily life. I dash off a quick message to a friend and wait for the OTP. I call another friend to wish her for her birthday and think I hear an OTP in the distance, which I promptly repeat to her. She says it back to me in case I get violent if there’s no response.
I was watching the budget speech the other day and thought the Finance Minister might end with an OTP. Just one more figure told dramatically and in support of our galloping economy.
After Queen Mary lost Calais to the French (it was England’s last foothold on continental Europe), she remarked “when I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais engraved on my heart”. If they open me up, they will find ‘OTP’ written beside a four-digit, six-digit or eight-digit number, as the case might be. Maybe they’ll find ‘Calais’ too in some corner, it’s difficult to say.
