All Of My Passwords…

The other day I did something that I had not done for the past many years. I had to finally give up my pride and install a password manager on my laptop and my phone. The need to have one had overcome my urge to memorise each alphabet, number, special character or phrase that my mind anxiously generated on the spot.

I don’t know when I ended up in the hailstorm of usernames, passwords, and login PINs. It may have happened over 8 years of me owning a smartphone, an email account (three, to be precise), and a phone number — And the unending process of signing up for services, social media, and online transactions.

Nothing is as annoying, as soul-sucking, as nerve-wracking as forgetting the login details of your bank account. And to make matters worse, some banks offer you two ways to hell – one being a login password and another being a profile password. Now, if you have always managed to put in a correct password, depending solely on your memory, have you taken a test for eidetic memory yet? Or for any other superpowers? How can a person remember all their passwords correctly!

Unfortunately, Mnemosyne (the god of memory) did not bless me so I had to go through the ordeal of resetting passwords. I had forgotten the login details for my two bank accounts. All I wanted to do was to check my account balance.

I had to recall my login usernames (set by the bank, not me), and my passwords, then had to be in a pristine network zone to receive OTPs (for those who have never experienced the thrill of being in a no-network zone while trying to receive an OTP, I must tell you, it’s a life-changing experience).

But it seems my fate was not done for the day, because just then I saw an option, tempting me like Satan! It was the Profile section of the page. When I clicked on it, the new page again asked me for the password, I didn’t think much and entered my “log-in” password again. Wrong! With the confidence that there must be a typo, I tried logging in again. I know, dumb! Then began the dread! Only one attempt left to enter the correct password! Otherwise, I would be locked out of my own profile.

Have you ever found your life so delicate that it’s hanging by a thread of passwords, with only one attempt left?

Then, I said to myself, if you get this incorrect, you might have to visit the bank, and you do not want to visit your bank. I did not want to visit my bank. It had happened to me before. It was like my life flashing before my eyes. I was standing in front of my branch manager and had forgotten my login username and password. He had to make a call to the headquarters.

So, I simply closed the tab, went to bed, and slept my pain away. But the next day, I had to do something, because I could not live with the constant fear of one day forgetting my credentials and visiting my bank and witnessing the branch manager’s disgruntled face.

I sat down, did some research, and found a panacea for my ailment, Password managers. Voila! I had heard of password managers like you may have heard of Egyptian pyramids. They are there, and you know it, and sometimes you want to visit them, other times, you just forget that they exist.

For now, my nightmares have stopped. For now…