Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I recently had cause to query my telecom bill. It seemed to be rather high.
I attempted to log on to my account. And failed. For some reason known only in the dark depths of the nerd universe, BT no longer recognised my long established password. So I could not check my bill. And because it no longer recognised my password, I could not send a query either.
I was cast into that helpless limbo we all know – where the company taking our money has suddenly rendered itself unreachable.
Where’s the number?
I embarked on the usual search for a telephone number, scanning the local directory, the Thompson directory and Yellow pages.
Wondering yet again why we need three telephone directories where once to sufficed, in an age when far fewer people use the telephone at all.
I finally by sheer chance located a number and dialled it, more in despair than hope. To my astonishment it proved to be the correct one for my needs. How on earth that miracle happened I have no idea.
Helpful human
Anyhoo, I had only to press the right buttons at the right time, in the usual exasperating manner, listen to a few minutes of mind numbing music, before coming into actual contact with a fellow human being.
True, he was apparently a local lad from some mid-Himalayan village or other, with a dialect no-one living even twenty miles away could follow, but he was keen to help.
In not all that much time at all, really, he explained the reason for my higher than usual bill, arranged to send a replacement password to my email address, and even arranged a reminder word in case I forgot said password in future.
I was tempted to ask why, if I forgot my password I would remember the reminder word. But decided not to bother.
Life’s altogether too short.
The next problem
Sure enough, in due course the replacement password appeared. And refused, despite several infuriated attempts, to let me log in to my account.
The difficulty lay with the ending. Which read ’10′(ten). Or perhaps ‘l O’ (Ell O’). Or ‘Ell Zero’ Or ‘One O’.
Your guess is as good as mine.
And each time I got it wrong I had of course, to re-enter my email address as well as the next attempt at the password. Each time to be met with the dreaded red letter refusal. And finally with a forced log out and wait fifteen minutes.
Ending with me answering their password email with a piteous cry for help.
A plea to which I still await a reply.
Secret squirrel status not required
But let me get to the nub of all this folderol. Which is, why on earth do I need a secret password in order to get to my own account in the first place?
Presumably it is so that no-one else can. But why should I care if they do? I am a very ordinary bloke living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary home.
So my bill must be very ordinary too. And even if it isn’t, so what?
If I decided not to use Internet billing, my bill would arrive through the everyday post, in an envelope not marked ‘highly secret’ in any way. And if I paid by cheque that too would travel by ordinary post with no thought that it should be encoded or masked from prying eyes.
Who cares?
I simply don’t care if everyone else knows how much my telephone and Internet costs me. And I haven’t the slightest interest in knowing how much their’s costs them.
Why should I?
In any case, if some sinister being desired for some sinister reason to find how much I – or anyone else – pays, they surely won’t fiddle about trying to crack my password. They will simply befriend any one of the hundreds of BT personnel who work in the accounts department and who obviously have complete access to the computer screens carrying such information.
It’s all down to the geeks
In a word, as far as utility suppliers – of gas, electricity, water or communication – are concerned, as with many other business’, the gobbledegook of filling in your email address twice, your password sometimes twice, and keeping secure some reminder word, is a load of codswallop.
It is an automatic routine. A routine no more necessary than the phrases we used to end those paper letters; ‘Your obedient servant’, Yours sincerely’ etc.
And it is put there by Geek page designers incapable of visualising a Web page without it.
Geek designers who badly need their backsides kicked.
Image: toaireisdivine under CC BY 2.0
