Remembering passwords, a pain!

Like it or not, passwords control you, not the other way round; and they're only increasing in number

Last week, I was with the head of a financial firm -- a good friend, if I may say so -- at his Nariman Point office in Mumbai. As usual, I began by asking, "How is life, boss?" He took a relatively long yawn and responded, "It would have been much better without passwords!"

Before I could ask more out of curiosity, he went on, "Life stagnates if you do not recollect passwords instantly. Be it your email, phone, internet banking, classified documents, trading account or the so-called pin encrypted credit or debit cards, all sort of things are password-driven. It's a web of passwords we are living in and dealing with every now and then. It just ......"

I found it hard to control my laughter on seeing his exasperation. When he found no sympathy forthcoming from me, he pretended to be pre-occupied with his coffee.

Jokes apart, if one ponders over what this gentleman was trying to drive home, it isn't hard to find merit in his thoughts. The need to learn by heart the mushrooming number of passwords may be turning out to be a widespread problem for many of us who've become slaves to "advanced technologies".

The change in technology and its use thus far in this century has been pretty fast. Yes, the advancements were meant to make our lives easier. There are several tags, like "Convenient banking", "Mobile Banking - banking on your finger tips", "Easy trading" and what have you.

But there is a price that we pay for it too. No matter how great the technology is, its day-to-day usage ultimately depends on the human minds' capability to remember the 'secret passwords' -- as if every private stuff is under threat by intruders.

Just imagine that you've changed your phone lock or say your internet banking password yesterday. And you completely forget it this morning. Isn't that added punishment to your already stressed brain cells? Don't you suddenly start feeling as if everything has come to a standstill? Let me admit, I have been a victim of this -- more frequently in recent days -- and I can't guarantee that it won't happen in future.

Nowadays your bank forces you to change your internet password every month or two. And that can be really annoying. Normally one tends to keep passwords which one is comfortable with, which one can remember easily and which one tends to associate one's loved ones or important dates with -- year of birth, place of birth, parents' wedding year, name of best friends and such like.

But when the bank mandates a change in the password, one tends to juggle with these numbers and get confused in due course. And then follow the numerous permutations and combinations while logging, which only leads to the blocking of your account.

The issue is so widespread that many of my own colleagues have had to call their bank customer care to unblock the account every time they log in. This is because after three unsuccessful attempts the account is locked for the next 24 hours. And don't forget the web of secret questions one has to navigate through to generate or recover passwords.

Like it or not, passwords control your life. And they are only increasing in number. You can't do away with them. With e-commerce and social networking sites being frequently visited by the net loving population, passwords have become important.

One may argue that only those with short memories forget passwords. But then, are we seeing an increasing in the number of such people? Have our brains lost the capacity to remember secret codes? Or is this incapability nothing but an outcome of an excessive dependence on technology?

What's the solution? I do not know what the magic solution for this could be. Perhaps one needs to go back to the traditional method of maintaining records of passwords in a diary and keep it 'extra-confidential' in the locker of one's cupboard.

Meanwhile, how many of us remember mobile numbers of, say, 10 friends or family members at an age when the market has been inundated with smartphones? If one can't even get to the fifth digit in a 10-digit number, it's time to ponder what has technology done to human memory.