Thursday, November 27, 2008

That's What You Call Password Overload

Years ago when email was very new, I had absolutely NO problem remembering my user name and password. But as the years have gone by and the net has become a very convenient way of doing almost anything from sending email to paying bills on line to accessing billing details to online banking -- and oh yeah my blog too, user names for almost all accounts and not to forget the passwords that go with it have been piling up. Are you with me? How can we keep track?

Yesterday, I was going to pay my credit card online using the Internet banking service of my ATM and then my mind just went blank! I initially typed what I thought was my user name and password and after 3 tries a pop up window saying "your account has been disabled. please contact the bank" left me staring blankly at it and wondering what else could my password be?? Could it be this? No that's my password for my blog. Could it be that? No that's for my email. I thought I had the same password as my airline mileage on line account? Oh but no, I remember I had to change it.

So then I decided to call customer service. I dislike doing that because it takes forever to get connected to a customer rep! I spent around 20 minutes of my precious day waiting to be connected to one. Finally I got to speak to one. After all the verifying the rep finally gave me a temporary password.

So I went back on line and accessed my account. Voila I was able to get through. Now I had to change my password. So i entered my NEW password. Once the page was refreshed, a notice informing me that I could not use the last 3 passwords I had already used in past. So after again, typing a new password and having the page refreshed, I got the same notice. So i tried a different password and then got the same notice. Because I play around with names and numbers which I know I will never forget, I often try to use the same passwords because I get so confused! On my 3rd attempt at changing my password, I get a pop up window that said "your account has been disabled. please contact the bank."

Frustrating!

So I got my purse, walked to the nearest bank and fell in line to pay my bills.

So much for convenience!

3 comments:

Heather said...

Frustrating!

I'm sorry, but I did have a laugh at your expense.

I have so many passwords and stuff that I got an address book and wrote them all in that.

AdriansCrazyLife said...

I hear ya! I've not only got a full dose of personal passwords I have to remember, I have at least another dozen I need to remember for work. I gave up. I finally put them all in a spreadsheet and then just password protected the spreadsheet. That way, I only have to remember one password if I have a brain lapse and forget one.

Also for websites, I keep 3 basic passwords - easy, medium and hard. For the library, the coupon site, or anything I don't really care about, I use the easy one. Shopping sites get the medium one. Anything banking related gets the hard one. Helps me keep them straight.

Heart of Rachel said...

Oh my, I could just imagine how frustrating that day was.

My mind gets overloaded with different passwords so I maintain a "password notebook" where I compile all important passwords and other details.