Password Please

The internet has created a new layer of memory challenges - passwords.  Rightfully so, there is big concerns about identity theft, fraud and abuse.  Most sites ask you to register and create a password.  I hate those sites that put requirements on the password - length (8 long), special characters, alpha and numeric needed, and are capital sensitive.  Then you have the financial institutions that want a special picture and phrase combined with three questions that only you should know.

That's the ironic part.  Questions like where you were born, grew up, went to school, city you were married in ....  Don't these sites understand what can be access through public records!   Given all the public records that are now available on-line there are very little personal secrets. 

God bless the browsers that try to help -  Explorer, Firefox and others will "remember" your passwords for you.  That is until this list mysteriously gets cleared, or you switch computers.  That causes many people to post their passwords on the "yellow stickys" attached to their desktop screen.

I wonder how many hours of customer service representative time has been wasted because customers are calling in frustration having lost or forgotten their username and password.  Or the wasted time of individuals trying to find that tattered piece of paper where you have listed all your sites with old passwords and user names.  U.S. Treasury abandonded their complicated matrix card of special symbols to log on since they discovered their users had no hope of accessing their account and decided to move to other ways of buying Treasuries.

So what was the maiden name of your maternal Grandmother's oldest sister?