If you are like me, you are more likely to ask your ‘significant other’ this question. I am talking about passwords here. Being a proponent for using the Internet for enhancing one’s productivity, I visit my financial institutions’ websites more often than I visit their brick and mortar counterparts. To transact my business in total security, I ended up giving different passwords to each one of them. In addition to remembering all of them putting in the right password in the appropriate place I must also remember the correct answers to the security questions that I pose myself and answer to get past their security. Changing the passwords as frequently as possible adds another level of complexity. Sometimes I am too lazy to change some system generated passwords given by the sites, there is no way in the world could I retrieve them from my memory should I happen to lose them.


It so happened once that I put in the right username and wrong password to one institution the first time and failed, then asked my life partner to let me know the right one and typed it in carefully but fail to check the (alphabets’) case and so could not get through, and in the third time before I could type in the last letter I pressed ‘Enter’ in a hurry. Having failed thrice in a row, the site suspected my entry and dutifully locked me out for my own protection! I had to wait for at least a day before I could attempt to get in again.

I tried several methods to store those user names and passwords, just so I could retrieve them in time but failed in all of them. I tried writing them down in my pocketbook, saving them in an excel document, allowing the browser to save for automatic retrieval the next time I visit the site and so on. All to no avail. Every too often, someone in my home reinstalls the OS in their constant quest for keeping the system in fighting fitness, or the hard drive fails or a power failure brings the entire system down, with me starting all over again.

My friend was suggesting as to why I should not use a simple password for all the sites I visit. And he said he is recommending this from personal experience. Earlier he used to keep his passwords so difficult to crack, that even he could not remember. So he switched to something easy to remember. The pity is it is so easy that, his neighbors could sneak into his wireless network without his knowledge or consent. But he doesn’t mind it. The upside he says, “I can always go to my neighbors to get my password should I forget mine.” How’s that for passwords!!


As for me I gave up all pretences, left it to my ‘better half’ who has a better way of managing my passwords. Hackers, if you are looking to find just one file that has all the user names and passwords don’t look for it in my system. Asking my spouse for help, may get you somewhere.

And the rest of you who are dating, in engagement, or who prefers to remain single and who for some reason could not share your little or big secrets with your soul mate as yet, may I suggest you to see this page as to how to remember/manage passwords.