Letter: Password overload

I now use passwords for 71 different websites, including the Concord Monitor. Each is suggesting that my password should be unique to its site and that it contain a complicated set of numbers, letters and special characters. How ridiculous. Only a mnemonist could do this. (Look it up.)

So I’ve used some identical passwords for harmless websites. Arrest me. And I’ve created a two-page document with all my passwords. Why? When my mother died it took weeks to straighten out her finances because we needed passwords only she had known.

Evidently I changed my password for the Monitor and did not write the new one down. So when my login was rejected I asked the Monitor to reset my password. I was sent a temporary one by email. I was directed to the Newspapers of New England Self Service Center. When I entered my user name and the temporary password, the response was “Internal Server Error.” The website’s “Contact Subscriber Services” listing has a circulation phone of 999-999-9999 and nothing in the place where an email address is supposed to be. Try the same process yourself.

It took me 30 minutes to finally get back in to the Monitor and submit this nice letter to the editor.

While we all have other, much more important things to worry about, I wonder if I am alone in this password overload frustration?

DOUG HALL

Chichester