Passwords

I have 62 different passwords currently in use to access a wide variety of accounts and websites in my daily living.

That’s right, 62.  And none of them are probably very secure.

Millions of people around the globe – if not billions – increasingly are using online communications to manage paying bills, watching money, investing in stock, buying books, trading in cars, finding designer duds at discount, tracking down just the right furniture, scoring the newest indie record or film, you name it.

All of that buying-transacting-managing requires passwords.  It also invites scrutiny—from thieves, governments, even your own employer.

As we’ve learned from Edward Snowden, online snooping is pretty ubiquitous.  Everyone’s doing it.  Good guys, bad guys, ex-wives and husbands, disgruntled lovers, helicopter parents:  we may love the Internet – it’s completely changed all of our lives, mostly for the better --  but we’ve lost our souls, ah privacy, in return for the having the world at our fingertips.

I’m really struggling with what I can do to A) better protect my identity and my privacy (not necessarily the same) and B) safely manage access to the information I seek.

The experts say that the cardinal rules for digital defense of your life involve protecting your passwords by regularly changing them or using encryption; fooling thieves by using tracking blocker tools so that they can’t follow you around the Web through your browser; avoiding the cloud except for stuff you don’t mind someone knowing about (like the government); and regular software updates to ensure that security bugs get fixed on your devices, laptops, desktops.

Ok, that’s all well and good – but what tools are best and safest?  How many times should you update software?  And are encrypted passwords really, really safe?

Then there’s the different products and provider companies, like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or Spider Oak or KoolSpan – way, way too cloak and dagger-ish for this 60 year-old gal who knows enough to get her job done and post her blog each day, but that’s about it.

This leads me back to the future –where we’re being dragged every hour, every day, every year against our will.  When will we just use biometrics or chips under our skin to manage all of this?  And will we evolve into cyborgs before it’s all said and done? (Although I know I’ll be long gone, this somehow troubles me.  It’s my periodic “end-of-days” OCD, if you will.)

But still…I can’t live without it.  Amazon.  iBooks.  EBay.  Paypal.  Cyber-crooks and our mutating cyborg bodies be dammed!

Sorry, gotta go log on now.  Time to buy Momma a brand new bag.