I’ve never been good at keeping secrets. This is why when I entered the Army, they chose to make me a dental assistant instead of placing me in Army Intelligence (I can hear all of you saying that’s an oxymoron, and you would be correct.) Yes, the Army, the home for all those dog-face infantry grunts, has a highly secret branch that gets involved in spy stuff, and I think the technical term is “spy stuff.” If the Navy can have its NCIS branch that fights terrorism worldwide (I know since I watch NCIS every Monday on CBS), so can the Army. Of course, I’m sure the Army’s Special Agents don’t look as good in a tight pair of jeans as those Nave agents do on their TV show.
Why do I bring up secrecy at this time? The answer is that I have had to deal with all kinds of passwords for banking sites, credit cards, bill-paying web pages, shopping portals, and anything else that requires me to sign in so I can take care of business. The purpose of signing in is to keep my personal information safe from the prying eyes of cybercriminals. I have to keep all my info secret. When I was young, that would have been very difficult. I would have been blabbing my passwords and user names all over the place. Of course, when I was young, we didn’t have passwords or user names. We had super secret passwords to enter our makeshift clubhouse and keep certain neighborhood kids out. For our money, we had bank books, not banking sites, and I think that was about it. Credit cards were only for the filthy rich. I now have about three credit cards, which gets me nowhere near filthy rich, just deeper in debt (A Tennessee Ernie Ford song reference, “Sixteen Tons.” Give it a listen because it’s now very topical).
Over the past few weeks, my wife and I have been involved in some business matters requiring us to sign into many different sites online. Each one requires a username and password. Thanks to the digital age, we must accumulate a long list of user names and passwords. I am willing to bet that none of us, except those with freaky memory ability, can remember a single one. Over the years of creating passwords, I have had to compile the list on a document on my computer so I can reference it when I need to access a password. I’m old, and I still can’t remember where my keys are and also my wallet, which I’m sure I left with my keys. (This is a test to see if you read the last post. There will be more tests).
I am now the proud owner of thousands of passwords, and I can’t remember a one. Not because my memory is so bad, but because I get confused about which password goes with which site. Is it my son’s birthday, my old address, or my wedding anniversary date (forgetting that could be lethal)? If I used the passwords that the site suggests, I would be in deeper trouble. Their passwords are usually fifteen characters long, with a mix of letters, some capitalization, numbers, punctuation, and symbols. I have difficulty remembering my birthday if I use it as a password. What do they think I am, a robot? Don’t get me started on those tests you must take online trying to prove you are not a robot. No, I’m not looking for Sara Conner (Another test. What movie is that from).
I have never had so many secrets to keep, including those from the weekend in Mexico…oops, I told you I was bad at keeping secrets. My wife and I agreed when we were married to never keep secrets from each other. Does that include my username and password for my “Beers of the World” membership?
Speaking of my wife, she just upgraded to a new computer, and in the process, all her passwords have either disappeared or gone into hiding. She has spent the past few days trying to recover what she can. It has been frustrating and stressful, especially now that it is time to pay that credit card bill, and she can’t get into her bank account or the credit card site. That begs the question since she can no longer get to her credit card site, is she no longer responsible for paying her credit card deb? I’m pretty sure the big orange guy uses the same logic to avoid paying all the settlements against him.
I have to backtrack. I did have to use passwords when I was in the Army. Whenever we had to pull guard duty, a password and response word was created so those on guard could determine if those nearing our checkpoint were friendly or foe. It turns out that someone heading our way yelling out the password tended to wake us up and make it look like we were doing our job.
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