Often is better

We note ways in which modern technology makes things harder.

Like almost everyone these days, we have multiple online accounts, each requiring a user name and password.  Ours number in the dozens, which is inconvenient.  (Indeed, we’ve avoided doing a number of things just because we’d have to set up yet another account and password.)  We’re aware that some people sign in once, and never leave; which strikes us as wasteful.  Others use a single password-remembering program, which strikes us as insecure.  We note that both Google and Microsoft are trying hard to get you to do all your workplace activities in one place, but there are things we do outside of work.  We won’t go into how we generate and remember passwords.  To outline the process would make it less secure, and anyway you have your own methods which no doubt work better for you.

The accounts we use often generally present no problems.  Even if the passwords or the details of logging in have to be changed, practice makes them routine.  It’s the accounts we use and the activities we do seldom that make trouble.

(The things we never do, of course, don’t present problems.  Unless, of course, we really need to have done them at least once; for instance, making up a will.)

Consider the account you use now and then, months apart, but that requires you to change your password at set intervals.  You have to find the old password; then generate a new one, according to rules that you are not always told.  We know of one site that would simply not let you do anything, until you guessed which special characters were required and which forbidden.  A related irritation concerns sites that work with some browsers but not others.

Then there are the accounts where whole procedures change from one sign-on to another.  To people who use the sites often, this presents no problems.  But we point out that it’s no bad thing to have to visit one’s doctor, or tax authority, or dental insurance site, at long intervals.  It doesn’t help that changes in the system can lose data.  We can quote two fairly important sites that, when one of us tried to sign on again, denied that any such account had ever existed.

Then there’s the matter of actions done at long intervals.  Our astronomer maintains a bank account in Britain.  When he went to graduate school in Cambridge it was a necessity; now he finds it convenient to pay his annual dues to the Royal Astronomical Society.  Since he has no income in the kingdom, he needs to transfer money from the US once a year.  Traditionally this was done with a wire transfer, an archaic but practical method that involved filling in a paper form at his US bank.  But a few years ago it became only possible through a phone call, which required the establishment of a separate PIN for phone transactions, a task requiring no small investment of time and effort.  This past year the phone call lasted an hour and a half and did not require the PIN, for reasons we cannot yet explain.

Our advice for seldom-done transactions is, of course, to make clear notes and remember all passwords.  But mostly, set aside plenty of time to accomplish anything in this age of blindingly fast digital communication.