THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE_____?

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND ______?

About half of those who receive my weekly blog are close to my age and the other half are much younger. I really don’t know who this article will apply towards the most.

Computers are good and certainly useful for research or curiosity or just random information. Of course, you must be careful to verify if what you are reading is truthful or just pure fiction. For example, the other day I was reading an article about Leonardo DeVincimichaelangelo who said the model for his famous painting was really named Lisa Maria Paderwerski. I don’t think this is correct, but who knows?

Companies spend millions of dollars trying to keep all our data safe and out of the hands of crooks to prevent fraud and theft. In my opinion, it’s money well spent. It might be easy for you younger folks to handle all of the safeguards, but to a lot of the older non-computer illiterate folks, it’s a pain in the rear for a lot of reasons. By the time you get to be 83 like me, our brains are full of stuff we’ve stored and experienced over these 80+ years. We have a hard time finding space for more stuff. It is also dangerous to learn something new as it may result in something like your address being deleted to make room.

It’s one thing to force us to use a password, but the requirements change with every site. Some want a number, a symbol, a capital letter and another letter in small caps. Some want more and some want less. Some want a pattern of some sort. Others require you to use a OTP (one time password) and then send the OTP back to them via your phone. Other have this dandy puzzle in which you must identify all of the busses or traffic signals in the squares. Now they have one that makes you fit some part into a puzzle of some kind or another. How do people do any of this stuff without a cell phone?

Now all of these require you to keep up with this huge inventory of password and log in names. You also have to remember the password you used for some company 5 years ago, since you can’t repeat it. I tried using one of those password services companies that remember all of this stuff for you. But I have a cell phone, a PC and a Kindle so they don’t seem to work on all of them. So, I do what I suspect the majority of you do which is to keep a small black notebook with all of this vital information that controls your entire life. Heaven forbid if this were to fall into the hands of the ‘enemy’, whoever that is. Of course, I am not dumb enough to write down the actual log in and password information in my little black book.

Of course, not. I code it all with a secret code that changes with every entry I make and after many attempts, I usually end up gaining access to my account. I should get a gold medal for trying or at least a ‘Atta Boy’ sticker of some sort.

I know, I’ll look on Amazon and see if they have any for sale.

But wait, that means I’ll have to log onto their website and get onto my account. I just changed the password yesterday.

Where did I write it down?

See you next week…Peary Perry