[July 03, 2011] OPINION: Forgot your password? Which one? You've probably got quite a few Tweet Jul 03, 2011 (The Bakersfield Californian - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Early Friday morning I needed to transfer money from one account to another, so I went to my credit union's website and typed in what I thought was my user ID and password. It wasn't. I checked the list I keep of all my various user IDs and passwords for all of the various online accounts I have, from the Really Important Stuff, like mortgage and insurance, to the more mundane affiliations, like Pandora and Netflix. I found the appropriate notation for my credit union and instantly recognized it as ancient information. I'd probably changed my password three or four times since the day I selected "dog8myflipflops." I went to the credit union's online chat-help site and entered my name and account number. "All advisors are currently assisting others," was the response. "Your estimated wait time is 4 minutes and 0 seconds. Thanks for your patience." That wasn't so bad. I sat and waited, feeling slightly embarrassed that my question would reveal a certain level of disorganization. "Your estimated wait time is 3 minutes and 30 seconds." It occurred to me that half the questions these advisors get are probably account access issues like mine -- people who can't remember their user IDs or passwords. With good reason, too. Every business with an online presence -- and that's pretty much every one that intends to remain solvent -- requires some sort of sign-on procedure for customers. That means passwords. We're encouraged to make our passwords difficult to guess, so we use capital letters and numbers and symbols and pretty soon we can't guess them anymore ourselves. Throw in different usernames and different passwords with different levels of difficulty for different levels of account significance -- for example, 401(k) management vs. ESPN.com story commenting -- and you've got dozens of subject-to-change, hard-to-keep-track-of authorization combinations. First chance I get, I'm changing my password to "Ih8passwords." "Your estimated wait time is 9 minutes and 30 seconds." Hey, are people cutting in line here? Like many people, I have a growing sense of vulnerability when it comes to my online safety. It seems like every couple of months we hear about a new Internet security breach, where thousands -- even hundreds of thousands -- of passwords or other protected information are lost, stolen or accidentally released into the virtual stratosphere. And then there's the hacker group LulzSec, which took down the CIA's website last month "for laughs." If the CIA can't keep its stuff safe, what chance do I have with my crummy little password? Whatever it is. "Your estimated wait time is 17 minutes and 6 seconds." What? Did I nod off? Did I blink? Is the robo-chatter about to sniff, "Sorry, we came looking for you and you weren't ready. Your estimated wait time is now three days." Has the website been hacked? Should I call 911? "Your estimated wait time is 21 minutes and 10 seconds." This isn't a credit-union chat, it's a cardio stress test. I'd grab my blood pressure monitor but I'm afraid to move from my seat. "Your estimated wait time is 16 minutes and 46 seconds." Must ... maintain ... focus. "Your estimated wait time is 8 minutes and 4 seconds." Blood returning to head. Brain function restored. Coherent thought returning. "Your estimated wait time is 4 minutes and 8 seconds." "Your estimated wait time is 1 minute and 53 seconds." "Hi! My name is Deborah. How may I be of service today?" We can start with a cold compress, Deborah. You can be of service in ways I had not considered when I first embarked on this simple quest 40 minutes ago. Bill Gates says passwords will soon be replaced with new, more secure forms of user identification like fingerprint or retina scanners. Trouble is, he has been saying it since at least 2004. A security researcher named Markus Jakobsson has come up with an alternative to passwords he calls "fastwords." Users settle on three simple words they alone would know: "dog eat shoe." Any order works, and if you forget them, the system can prompt you with one of the words. I don't know if "fastwords" beat retina scanners, but the system has to be an improvement on passwords. My first fastwords will be "good riddance passwords." Now, please forget you just read that. Email Editorial Page Editor Robert Price at [email protected]. To see more of The Bakersfield Californian, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bakersfield.com. Copyright (c) 2011, The Bakersfield Californian Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]