Securitise your life

Modern day – everything is now said to be more secure, you have to enter passwords for this, this, and this. Its quite contradicting. While we create the need for more passwords, yet why does it feel our privacy is being restricted in every possible way? At work, we're being watched for everything, our emails are filtered, where we surf, what we read, what we google, the blogs we read, the number of times we log on to our banking - everything is being monitored. (think George Orwell's 1984!)

I have to admit, I'm just hopeless when it comes to passwords. For work, the (many) systems prompts us to change our password each month. Oh gawd, and we're constantly warned not to write down our passwords. Every so often, I find myself ringing someone, helpdesk or the system provider going.. "Sorry to be a pest, but I've locked myself out.. again!" I shouldn't be sorry, I know. Its not my fault I have to memorise the million passwords I have to enter just to start my day at work.

Even for my personal life, I've got another million passwords to remember, and Grumpy's too (he doesn't know how Internet banking works).

I was at a bank recently with a close friend during lunch.

Jules: Hi! I'm here to notify a change of address

Bank Officer: Certainly. Do you have your ATM card?

Jules: Nope. I lost it.

Bank Officer: Its OK. That's fine. We'll need some ID.

Jules: Oh, can you send me a new ATM card? And reset all my passwords?

Bank Officer: Reset all yr passwords?

Jules: Yes, reset my ATM pin, I can't remember what it is. Reset my Internet banking password too, I can't remember that too. And.. I can't remember the answers to the 2 security questions.

Jules' friend: Jules, ARE YOU REALLY JULES?!

Hehehe… A new thing now, is that NOT only have you got to memorise a password, but there's a few security questions as well. So in case you forget your password, you try answering your 2 security questions (which you're meant to set up yourself). If you can answer them, they'll send you the password electronically.

I locked myself out of the payroll system at work recently. Emailed HR. The HR person calls me back going "How about answering your security question?" she says "Your question is 'when is my anniversary?' Don't you know when your anniversary is, jules?!" I DO! I SWEAR I DO! But I don't know the format.. did I put the answer is dd-mm-yyyy? Or d-m-yy? I can't remember. So I got locked out of the security question stage too. My friend who accompanied me to the bank that day was cracking up as she overheard me on the phone with HR.

And last night, I tried to log on to my Internet banking (the one which recently reset everything for me). TOTALLY FORGOT my password. So I went to the security question stage. 1^st question "when is my dog's birthday?" First thing through my head… "OMG, which dog? I've got 2 dogs!" Guess what? I've been locked out again. Too many incorrect attempts, apparently. CRAP! I have to go back to the bank on Monday. ARRGGGHHH!!!