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I have hundreds of passwords.
This may lead you to suggest that, in fact, passwords are not dead, but I want to walk you through the average experience of using and entering a password for me.
In an ideal world, the password I have chosen, which has been randomly generated, automatically populates from my password software, or alternatively saved in iCloud keychain. When this works, it’s seamless — passwords populate as I turn my hideous gaze toward the iPhone, and away I go.
Except what actually happens is that there are 6 or 7 different entries for each website I’m logging into. Of those entries, as many as six could be old passwords, and there is no way for me to quickly reference which one is or isn’t real. At this point, I am forced to reset the password, because I am likely logging into something that I need to get into at that moment, or because the website in question decides that after a few “incorrect” entries it has had enough, and I must provide it with a new password. This password is then helpfully saved into either my password software or iCloud keychain, at which point I now have a new password.
Could I go and delete the other passwords? Sure. Should I? Yes. Have I done this? Absolutely. Does this fix the problem? Very rarely. You see, iCloud and 1Password don’t always manage to save things. I am regularly gaslit by my password managers, assured each time that I have saved my new password, a password I barely even register as I accept it because, at this point, thinking up a…
