Keeping Secrets

There are a lot of codes that I need to remember in order to get through a day of work. I’m talking about passwords, combinations, personal identification numbers, credentials of all kinds. Most of these, I keep in Web Confidential, a Mac OS X program expressly designed to encrypt and store this kind of data; it’s pretty much the best utility of its kind in my experience, but I’m no big fan of it. That’s why I notice acutely when I have to open it more often, and over the past six months, I’ve been looking up the 280 or so passwords I’ve stored in it almost constantly.

I’m actually not trying to advocate for a monolithic, single-sign on access system like Microsoft’s lamentable Passport, but I do think we need a better way of managing all the credentials that 21st century life and work require. Just for the fun of it, I sat down and tried to make a list of all the various codes that I’ve had to access over the course of the past several days.

Real World Credentials

• Combination to open my gym lock
• Bank account number to deposit paycheck
• PIN number for my ATM card
• Speed dial numbers on my mobile phone to call my girlfriend
• Phone number and 14-digit PIN to use my international calling card
• Social security number for various purposes
• Credit card numbers for purchases
• Five to ten frequently dialed phone numbers

Workplace Credentials

• Passwords to access two user accounts on my Mac
• Code to disarm the office security system
• User identification to access network servers
• User name and password to access accounting and time tracking system
• Five to ten user names and passwords to access various project extranets
• Passwords to access various Macs via Timbuktu
• Password to accces content management system for our Web site

Web Site Credentials

• Password to access Subtraction.com FTP server
• Password to access Movable Type on my server
• Passwords to access three POP mail accounts
• Password for my DreamHost control panel, for managing my Web server
• Password for my domain registrar for managing my domain names

Web Surfing Credentials

• Password to access my LinkedIn account
• Password to access my three instant messenger screen names
• Password to access my Amazon account to check on a recent oder
• Amazon Associates ID for creating links to products in my weblog posts
• Passwords to access Yahoo Mail and Gmail accounts

Don Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things,” first published seventeen years ago, included an accounting of the codes that a person might need to remember in a day in 1988. Almost two years later, we’ve compounded that average number many times, I think, and we’ll probably keep doing so for at least another decade. It’s a secret agent future, where everything is locked away from everybody. It’s a little scary.

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