Returning to the office last Tuesday after a long weekend, I couldn’t start work as I’d forgotten my computer password. Perhaps it was the combined excitement of a spectacular wedding followed by a spectacular death, but my brain was no longer able to retrieve a simple sequence of seven characters.
In the early days of computers I never forgot my password. But that’s because the top secret word I’d chosen was “Kellaway”, which I found could be effortlessly recalled even in the most fraught moments. Things only started to go awry when the computer security experts told me this password would no longer do. Reluctantly, I went for something a bit more elaborate and, to make sure I didn’t forget it, I wrote the word on a Post-it note and stuck it to my screen.
But now Post-it notes are frowned on and the computer insists that my new password must contain a confusing mixture of cases, numbers and squiggles and be endlessly changed. To help me cope, I have devised a system: I rotate people in my family, with capital letters, punctuation and ages. Yet, as I found on Tuesday, this system is not foolproof. I daresay it is simple enough for any hacker to crack in a nanosecond, but it is complicated enough to foil me. I can’t remember which family member’s turn it is, whether it’s a full-stop or a comma, or how old they are.