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Your Internet Irritations

So last week, I was on the verge of throwing my computer out of the window because of my personal interweb irritations. Instead, I decided to write this article, and it turns out most of you feel just like I do when you see those words – "Create an account".

Reading your letters made me feel so much better. I'm so glad I'm not alone. So, to show my love, we're publishing them here. See what other readers had to say:

Anne-Marie wrote in:
Hear! Hear! You have mentioned all the things that bug me!

Compulsory corporate sites that you go to once a month maybe and you have to remember the password you created at great expense and loss of life then, only to find it has expired in the meantime! I no longer make notes. When I need to access the site I go to "Forgot Password" and get them to send me a new one.

If it doesn’t open without a password, I don’t want to join it. I have long since lost interest…

Leoni wrote in:
You are not alone.  I don’t want any more accounts either.  The problem is, all my passwords are the same, so if a hacker or thief or whatever knows one, he knows them all.

Omaya wrote in:
You are SO not alone!

You know it’s really bad when you’ve got 4 different career sites reminding you to update your CV but can’t remember the login or password and then it's worse when you click the “forgot password” button but don’t remember the email address you used to register originally.

LOL – less logins please.

Marlize wrote in:
How about those security gibbish words which sometimes comes in a font which NOBODY can read? Then we wonder why the account was not created .

Barbra wrote in:
Yep, I'm so with you on this.

Just when we thought we were liberated from remembering telephone numbers, we find ourselves in password hell. I try my best to use the same 'formula' for passwords, but of course even in this uniformity seems to be too much to ask, and it never works, as there is always yet another unique password requirement on every site.

So now I spend what feels like hours sending 'forgot password' requests, just to forget them again soon after.

Yours, lost in a maze of passwords.

Juanita wrote in:
I do agree with you totally and utterly. I cannot comprehend the fact that we send people into space but someone cannot come up with a device that will let us have one username and one password for all our internet browsing (or just use our fingerprint!). I have 3 online banking accounts, 3 store accounts, 2 e-mail accounts, 2 social network accounts. On top of that I have to log into insurance websites, medical aid and gym and I subscribe to about 5 other websites that I go on to regularly.

Each one of these requires a different set of Usernames and Passwords. I can, for the life of me, not remember them all and have come to a point where I'm writing them all in a little book that I carry around wherever I go. The big problem with this however is, that I am afraid that I might lose the little book or that someone will steal my bag, so I end up writing all the information "cryptically". Then I usually end up forgetting what I meant when I wrote it and have to spend more time online having to reset passwords!

So, nowadays when I come to a website that is interesting (but not a necessity) and they ask me to create an account, I close it.

Hope someone will come up with an answer soon before we have brains exploding everywhere.   

Stef offered this solution:
Hi Kele, I don't have a specific Internet irritation but I do have a possible remedy for the password and form filling frustration.

Check out Roboform or LastPass which will securely store all your passwords and form filling info. All you need to remember is one master password for Roboform or LastPass and it will remember the rest for you whenever you want to login to one of your accounts.  

These come in portable versions as well so that you can carry your encrypted 'key' with you on a flashdrive and log-in from any computer anywhere without risking your personal info being hijacked.

They've definitely made my life a whole lot less stressful.

Jacqui says:

My interweb pet-peeve would have to be the “Twars” (or Twitter wars if you like).  I am embarrassed to admit that I have, on occasion (one isolated occasion in fact) allowed myself to get drawn into such a war and could probably be labelled as a pseudo-troll.  Yes I was a troll, but only once – I promise! 

The slinging matches amongst various people on the internet reach epic proportions at times.  Steve Hofmeyr is bound to want to slap me as he no doubt will have pangs of guilt if he read this.   One should be grateful that true identities are mostly hidden, aliases quirky and ammo only of a verbal variety.

Happy surfing!

Follow Kele on Twitter.


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