Password Blues

I hunched over the terminal in a responsibly paranoid manner, hiding the keypad with one hand and clutching my wallet in the other as I entered my personal identification number (PIN).

That was twenty years ago when I had one debit card and one PIN to remember.

Then along came personal computers and the Internet – with e-mail, online banking, eBay, Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, MyFamily, and a host of other websites. Suddenly I had not one password to remember, but two dozen.

Sternly we are warned to commit this confidential information to memory rather than writing it down. Sure, that’s not a problem at all. I would use the same PIN and password over and over, but I’m sure that’s a security risk too.

Here’s an idea: Why don’t you write down your PINs and passwords in a little booklet and I’ll write down mine, and we won’t look under each other’s mattress?

I was grateful when my husband introduced me to the wonderful world of point-collecting credit cards. As long as we paid them off each month it was a great system – a couple hundred dollars worth of merchandise to collect now and then, and all that was required was an easy signature – no PINs or passwords or bending over keypads.

That worked well until recently, when the encoded chips on credit cards appeared. So here I go again, more PINs to remember since the booklet hidden under my mattress isn’t much help when I’m at the grocery store.

I suppose I’ll manage somehow, after I take contortionist classes and learn how to shield the keypad while discreetly searching for the PIN scratched on the bottom of my shoe.