Drowning in Passwords

“Your password must be at least 8 characters long and contain at least one number and special character.” That’s a sentence I’ve read literally hundreds of times. Each of my countless accounts has a unique password that conforms to the specific requirements of whatever engineer put together the app’s authentication page. Modern life is surely made easier by the incredible technology we have access to, but at the same time, it is complicated by the security measures we have to take in making sure that our various accounts with their private information stay private. With the sheer volume of accounts that I have to use, the only possible way of remembering all of my passwords is to use a password manager. However, even then, I have to be on my toes with maintenance. Today, I logged into Google and was greeted with the message,

“11 of your accounts are using passwords exposed in a third-party data breach. They’re at risk. Change them now and never use them again.”

I hope that someday someone comes up with a better way to deal with the authentication issue, but for now I’m forced to settle with 1001 “strong” passwords to keep the evil-doing, no-good-at-all hackers at bay.