It's only Tuesday, and already this week I've had so much blatantly false security, I'm ready to reserve a room in the nearest psych ward for refuge from this crazy world. Everything one does nowadays requires a password. And I'm on it. I follow professional suggestions for secure passwords. I rarely use the same password for different accounts. I ~ a senior citizen with a simple life ~ have 95 passwords. How do people with truly complex lives manage all these passwords? Not to mention user names.
Okay, a fun new one was generated so that I could attend certain concerts. But then Google decided to not accept my established password, so I made up a new one. My homeowners' listserv changed providers this week, so hey, new password. Even though Medicare and Social Security are related agencies, their websites require separate passwords. Now security is a two-step process, so confirmation codes valid for only 30 minutes now clutter my text list.
Suddenly one e-mail account gets too much weird spam, so I'm trying to change that password, but can I? No. Clicking every icon on the home page, I cannot find a way to do this. After waiting on-hold forever, my provider told me a different department handles passwords. Maybe tomorrow I'll muster the patience to call back. When I look online for Christmas gifts and a merchant requires a password, I go elsewhere. I'm fed up. And I can't keep up.
Precautions, it turns out, don't eliminate fraud, only reduce the odds. Yesterday my luck ran out. I received a letter showing someone had filed for unemployment benefits in my name. Yep, you guessed it ~ To report this fraud, I had to generate three new passwords, for the Department of Employment Services, the government's identity theft website, and a credit bureau. Sigh.
Where can I go if the psych ward doesn't have free beds at the moment? A monastery? Cave? Oh, wait ... Maybe my therapy can be holding my neighbor's new puppy. No password or user name required, only a mask. I can handle that.
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