Usernames and Passwords

When I was a kid, my mom was devoted to the good old JC Penney catalog. So that meant the slogan "please allow 7 to 8 weeks for delivery" were ingrained in my mind. Well, I am devoted to ebay and amazon (to name a few) and these things tend to arrive instantaneously.

However, with all of this on-line activity means the inevitable usernames and passwords for security reasons. Since I've had my identity stolen twice, I'm not sure how well all of these precautions work.

But since I have so many accounts, I often lose track of all the different names and accounts. For example, I have an account with NFL Fieldpass, amazon.com, ebay (and paypal), espn insider, NFL Shop, my yahoo mail account, my school email account, this blog account, my bank account, and my cash card. Whoa. And that's just off the top of my head!

Of course, most of the time my username is just my email. But I hate to get all of that crap - in terms of all the emailing lists I get added to as a result of being active with these other accounts - clogging up my school email, so I often use my yahoo account. But I also have a home email account, so I've begun using that too. That means I have up to three different usernames. That's not so bad. The passwords are what kill me.

Usually I use my normal one. But sometimes that isn't long enough for certain accounts, so I go to my secondary options, which mostly works fine. However, sometimes I worry about someone getting a hold of those two and running up more bogus bills on my accounts. So I often use another password. Sometimes - as with my bank account - the make you change your password every few months to prevent identity theft.

That means I have three usernames with up to four or five passwords. No wonder sometimes it takes me ten minutes to log on to some accounts, especially when I'm rusty.