Please enter your password

Passwords and PINs are everywhere you turn these days. Do you remember all of yours?

By: Pat Daley

  Psssst! How many passwords do you have?
  MSN.CA - also known as the Microsoft Network - released results last week of a survey on password use by Canadian adults. It seems we like them - or at least we find ourselves in a lot of situations where we have to use them.
  Almost 90 per cent of us use passwords as part of daily living for tasks like listening to telephone messages, taking money out of the bank, buying groceries, and checking e-mail.
  More than 83% of people have two or more passwords and about 72 per cent have three or more. I read all this information rather smugly, thinking I'm like the 46 per cent who use the same password for more than one application.
  Then I started to count. I think I have at least five operational passwords. I say "think" because I had to dream up some just to be able to get information from certain web sites. I visit those sites infrequently - even though they are constantly sending me newsy e-mails - and wish to thank sincerely whoever dreamed up that "forgot your password?" feature that some sites offer. (Of course, that only works if you remember your user name. Somehow the knowledge that I'm Pat Daley #773 just doesn't stick in my mind.)
  So why does any of this matter? Well, with all those passwords, people are bound to forget them. And they write them down in places that are handy for anyone who wants to find them. Says MSN.CA spokesperson Jill Schoolenberg, "It seems that the more passwords people are asked to use, the more likely they are to behave in ways that can increase the security risks passwords were meant to reduce."
  (In fact, we don't know what the security risks actually are; even though they tell people not to write down their PINs, the Canadian Banker's Association says they're not aware of anybody keeping statistics on fraudulent use of bank cards.)
  Wouldn't you know, MSN's parent company Microsoft has a service to help. Its on-line passport allows users to store all their passwords and other relevant information in a way that lets them forget all about it.
  I don't think I'll use the service. Security is really only an issue for me when it comes to my bank account. I've had the same PIN for almost 20 years; it's safely stored in my personal, portable memory and not written down anywhere.
  I have a separate password for retrieving voice mail messages. The only people I can imagine being interested in those have ready access to the technology needed to listen to the phone calls while they're happening. They don't need my password.
  The same thing goes for e-mail. I have a different password there, but it's the one I use for all computer applications. Except, strangely enough, when it comes to Microsoft.
  The only time I can remember having to come up with a different password was the day I tried to register a new Microsoft program on-line. They wanted more characters than my usual password contains. The whole registration process was so slow, cumbersome, and annoying that I finally typed in some smart-aleck phrase. And promptly forgot it.

Pat Daley is a freelance writer and editor in Athlone in Simcoe County, Ontario.

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