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What's been your most painful parent tech support moment?
What's been your most painful parent tech support moment?
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216 comments
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My father is 85, used to be a dev. No issues, maintains his file sync between his two sites by himself via various clouds. Sticks to Windows.
Can't get him to use proper passwords (as in random generated stuff from his password manager) though, he insists on needlessly peppering the weak-ish passwords he comes up with and storing that in his decent password manager instead. I guess you can't win them all.
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You know what, it's better than writing all his passwords down in a little notebook in his filing cabinet
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Eh, if a hacker has physical access to your file cabinet, you've got way bigger issues.
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This is always my response. Hacking a lot of times comes down soft skills, where bad people get you to give them your sensitive information. (Your pornstar name is the street you grew up on and your first pet's name, finding your mom's maiden name on facebook)
If someone is in an office, having a post it or notebook is a bad idea, especially if your area can be accessed by the general public (like front desk people, or anyone who takes walk-ins)
But for a person living alone, or with people they trust, having a hard copy in a safe place is really safe. The Online Scammer isn't going to break & enter into everyone's homes to get their post it passwords.
(And it gives them the ability to give a trusted person access if they end up in the hospital or something, without having to share that info 'just in case'.)
The threat is always greatest (if you don't fall for phishing easily) from the people inside your house. The ones that could steal your jewelry, cash, pick up your mail and open accounts, or just outright sit in your chair and access your computer.
In that case, even if you have a password manager, chances are good someone with physical access to you can find or figure out that one password. And like Bytemeister says, you have way bigger problems in that case.
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"But if that's a bad idea, why would they sell password notebooks? Looks it even says 'My Passwords' in a cute handwriting-style font!"
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Oh sure. It's not perfect but it could be so much worse. All in all he's doing fine.
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peppering the weak-ish passwords he comes up with and storing that in his decent password manager instead.
Most of the time people do that, it's because they worry about not having the password manager and meeting to type alphabet soup. I've gotten through to a few people to use 5 words with a delimiter pepper. It's still rather strong but they feel like they could type it if they had to.
Downside, if a site isn't hashing, they won't allow long passwords
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216 comments