My computer is causing my identity crisis

IT’S ALWAYS nice to know you’re not the only idiot in the village. I thought maybe there was something basically wrong with me because I couldn’t remember all the “usernames” and “passwords” I was supposed to keep in my head to enable me to use my computer.

I wrote about this in yesterday’s Tavern column feeling rather guilty and expecting to receive a hundred e-mails telling me I was being silly and that it was easy to remember my passwords if I only… and so on.

Instead I received a dozen messages from readers who felt the same.

This business of needing a different identity code for every program on your computer is rubbish. In real life I don’t have to be David Biggs to Argus readers and John McTavish to members of my wine tasting group and Fred Jones to my bank manager and Andrew Smith to my doctor and Sam Gubbins to my dentist. This is what my computer expects me to be. I log on to Facebook and the computer asks: “Who are you?” and I say: “Hi. You know me. I’m David Biggs.” The computer says: “I don’t believe you. Prove it.” I say: “Okay, here’s my ID number,” and the computer says: “That’s incorrect.”

There’s no way you can argue with a computer, so you say: “Okay, computer, how do I prove who I am?” and the computer says: “You must become somebody else.” Then it sends me a new password via my cellphone and I am officially no longer the Me I was yesterday. I am a brand new Me.

It’s important, though, to write down the new Me and erase all the old Me’s as fast as possible or else I’ll forget who I am.

Sue, a reader in America, wrote: “I couldn’t agree more. I have a whole book of passwords stored by my desk, and because I have added new ones over a long period of time, there is no organisation to it. It’s not alphabetised or anything. I have to page through it each time and try to remember the page I wrote that particular password on, or else I must scan all the pages individually until I happen upon it.”

Daphne wrote, also from America, that she had given up on passwords and Snapchats and Facebooks and Skypes and Squitters and Tweets and whatever else and gone back to using only simple e-mails. She can communicate with all the people who matter in her life without having to remember who she is every time she says “hello”.

I am sure there are computer boffins out there who could devise a program that offers just one username and one password for everything.

Not many of us control financial empires or transmit state secrets on our computers. We don’t need elaborate security systems. Most of us simply want to communicate. Why is this such a problem?

Last Laugh

The woman saw the electrician coming up the drive, so she rushed out and shouted angrily: “What happened to you? You were supposed to come and fix the doorbell yesterday. ”Well, I did come yesterday,“said the electrician, “and I rang the bell three times. But when there was no reply I reckoned nobody was at home, so I went away.”