Passwords and failures

P. Esakki Muthu 

I was proud of my memory power as I was able to remember so many trivial things that had happened in my life. But with the advent of computers and the inroads technology has made into my life, memory is now no longer under my control.

Computerisation, people say, has aided humanity. However, it is making me mad as I am forced to remember so many passwords. When I got my ATM card, I was required to remember a four-digit number that enables me to draw cash 24 hours a day. I was so proud of it and wrote the PIN number in a paper and kept it in a secret place. Soon I became so familiar with the secret number that I now do not remember where I kept the piece. 

When my employer organisation introduced computerisation in salary administration to facilitate paperless transactions, I was required to use a password that is a combination of alphabet and numbers in a set proportion. Again, my office asked me to use a personal password that is a combination of capital letters, small letters and numbers to access my mail box in the office group mail. My immediate boss asked us colleagues to memorise and remember a particular password to access mails that were coming to the department.

I opted for internet banking to do online transactions and that required me to use a password — a combination of numbers, words and symbols. My option to use my mobile for smaller banking transactions forced me to remember a password, again a combination of numerals and alphabet some of which should be in capital and others in small letters. As I am working in a bank, my employer gave a password to access the accounts of customers for enquiry and it is, as you rightly guessed, a combination of variables in a set proportion.

To facilitate payment of my premium online, my insurer asked me to use a password and access my account. The investments I made in mutual funds forced me to remember so many passwords to enable the fund administrators to successfully introduce paperless, courier-less correspondence and to reduce their overheads. As I opted for trading in shares, my broker gave me a password to facilitate and validate my transactions. The Railways gave me a password to book my tickets online.

The same was the case when I opted for email service in Gmail. Simultaneously, I opted for an email account in Yahoo but am not able to remember the password. The vernacular newspaper I read gave me an ID and password to post my online comments.

As the maze of passwords puzzled me, I wrote all of them in a piece of paper and kept it in my bank locker and am now afraid of my wife as it is a locker in our joint names. But as the locker timings are fixed and as I am required to go to my locker maintaining branch, my access to the locker to verify the password details is limited by these handicaps. 

I, therefore, opted for storing the same in a secret chamber in a digital diary and place the same in a secured place. But the problem is, I often forget the place where I kept my diary.

These meticulous jobs do not help me in day-to-day administration as I get confused with my personal password and departmental passwords while accessing my office mail. Again, unless I consciously remember the medium through which I operate, I use my mobile password for internet transactions or salary administration password for share transactions, leading to suspicions in the system about the user and the protective blocking of my access thereby immobilising me for the day.

As memory fails me often, partly due to ageing and partly due to the confusing combinations of numerals, alphabet, symbols and small and capital letters stipulated by various administrators, these password failures often haunt me.