Happy marriages and the password conundrum

You don't have to be heavily invested in the Cyber world to come up against the password conundrum; every application requires a "strong" password and the security gurus insist it should not be the same word for every application and it should have upper case letters and special characters, and numbers, and it should not be a password you have used in the previous 27 years, and soon the care and feeding of proliferating passwords takes on a life of its own.

I was reminded of the password conundrum the other morning, when Barb hesitantly asked me for some technical assistance when her iPhone Gmail account barfed and asked her for a password and then turned up its nose at any and all passwords offered. I say hesitantly, because I confess I'm less than patient when it comes to technical support at home, and we've had... how shall I put this... "issues" over passwords in the past. So much so, that she would rather ignore the fact that she has 22 AppStore updates pending than ask me to help her figure out what her Apple password is. Okay, another confession: she has two Apple accounts and two Apple passwords as a result of my technical support on a prior occasion.

 And the Gmail account? She knew her Gmail password in times past. It was the same password she used for everything else and all was well until Google notified her that it appeared someone was trying to hack into her account and it might be best if she changed her password. I cooked up a doozy, changed her password, told her what it was, and promptly forgot it. She used it successfully for a while, until the other morning, when Google decided she should re-enter it. At that point the discussion around the breakfast table went something like this:

She said: "Dear, Gmail won't accept any of the passwords I know. Could you take a look at it?"
He said: "Why certainly, dear. I look forward to this opportunity to use my technical background and knowledge to assist you with this problem. Do you remember what your password used to be?"
She said: "It used to be ********, until you changed it. I really regret to say that I'm unsure what you changed it to. It could have been ******* or *******, but I'm not sure."
He said: "Not a problem, dear. I'm sure you stored it in your password vault app. Didn't you?"
She said: "Of course, sweety, and I did try that one, but that mean old Gmail just won't take anything I try."
He said: "Don't fret, my love. I'll have this set right in no time."
She said: "You're so good to me."

Well, perhaps that was not the exact conversation, word for word, but it was something very close to the above, I'm sure. I'll get back to you on that whenever Barb speaks to me again. Which may not be soon.

So let me pass on some hard-earned advice to those of you men who find yourself in a similar situation: the key to a happy marriage and the password conundrum is to recognize that she has no interest whatsoever in the formation, storage and use of good, strong passwords, and when they get messed up - as they will, from time to time, our role is to shut up and fix them.