Dancing The Two-Step
Why Logging In Now Feels Like a Test I Didn’t Study For
One thing that annoys me — despite fully understanding why it exists — is the two-step authentication now required for just about everything. I know it’s there for security and to prevent your life from being financially ruined, but it always seems to kick in at the worst possible moment.
And trust me, I’m of an age and time when I easily carried fifty different phone numbers in my head. In the smartphone age, that ship has sailed. That time is long gone. Now I have three passwords to remember — even though I’m not always sure which one goes where.
When I want to check my bank balance on the desktop, the phone is in another room. Or I’m already on the phone, and they send a code to my email. That means finding my glasses, switching screens, and hoping I still remember the seven digits by the time I get back to where I’m supposed to enter them. It’s mentally challenging and physically annoying in a way that feels unnecessary for a task that should take seconds.
Systems designed to protect us now require us to perform small feats of memory, coordination, and patience just to exist inside them. But God forbid if I take more than ten seconds to respond or mistype a digit, and have to start the entire process over. Why does it require so many digits? I’m not launching nuclear missiles here — I’m trying to pay for DoorDash.
Every system assumes I’m either a criminal or an idiot, and then times me like a game show.
By the time I get the death text — “Your code has expired. The system will soon send you another.” — I’ve closed my mind to the process and have begun to think about what I want for lunch. I’ll check back in three days when the system unlocks me.
Like most annoying things in life, political correctness for example — two-step authentications started small. At first it was just the bank. OK, my money should be safe. Then the credit card companies, OK... don’t want my identity to be stolen.
But now this memory-and-device-juggling antic has spread to my doctors’ websites and other medical portals, the utilities used to pay the water and electric bills and even the sanctified public library. Lord help us if someone finds out I’m re-reading Pride and Prejudice.
As for the utilities it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if someone cracked my code and paid the phone bill, neither would I lose sleep if someone hacked into my A1C results. As long as no one discovers, I’m really reading Tropic of Cancer.
There’s something un-American about needing help to log in — especially when you have to log in to get help. I’ll give the system this: it works.
It keeps me out.
I'm tired of getting e-mails telling me that my invoice is attached. From bogus entities who have copped the logos and graphics from legit services I'm using. I never open the attachments, which are probably viruses and programs to rake my data or log my keystrokes. One such e-mail thanked me for my payment of $483 and some change (receipt attached). Sure. Setting a rule to send these to trash just means the scammers switch e-mail accounts/addresses.
Same age group...a life hack for you is to keep the phone with you so you don't need to remember, just read the screen.
As for the necessity of the extra authentication, the info they want to steal is sold only to help another black hat to take your actual money