Times technology has made life harder...

[Sparklfairy]

I recently got a new phone with fingerprint recognition. I've never had one before and I liked the novelty sad I know

A few weeks later I burned the finger and the skin came off... fingerprint recognition no longer worked to unlock my phone. It had prompted me while setting it up to set a 'back up' pin but as I never used it I promptly forgot it. Had to wait until the fingerprint grew back enough to unlock the phone again. Luckily it was only a day or two (albeit multiple attempts at a funny angle!)

Has anyone else got any weird technology gripes to make me feel less of a moron? I will be guarding the finger with my life in future!

My iPhone will not recognise my face if I don't have my contact lenses in which is infuriating- I have to put in a passcode like some sort of barbarian

@TreacherousPissFlap - my iPhone recognises me with or without my glasses - if you go into settings, there's an option to set an additional appearance, so you can set one with your lenses in and the second one without.

My DH's phone recently died and needs repairs - and we found out that several numbers, including for the kids' activities, were only on his phone. Once his phone is back from repair, I may follow in my grandmother and MIL's footsteps and get an address book as a back-up because this has a been very tech-awkward.

@TabbyMumz I can relate!

We had a similar issue when my DF had a stroke and was unable to communicate. Of course he'd had a major item listed on eBay for months and it chose that night to sell. Getting into his eBay account to deal with it for him was a bit of a challenge.

My MIL has an automatic liquid soap dispenser. A plastic gadget that you fill with throwaway plastic bottles. You wave your hand under it and it dispenses a massive dollop, twice as much as you need. It also dispenses if you walk past at the wrong angle. The kids had great fun waving their hands at it. You can't see when it's almost empty. Sooooo much better than, you know, an actual bar of soap. Not.

My supposedly secure face recognition iPhone was used twice by my 4 year old to ring the same person. It was definitely locked and he wasn't anywhere near the top of my last calls list etc. According to apple and google this is impossible and the wee bugger won't part with how. Even stranger she knows this person by their nickname not real name but it's his real name in the phone. I have changed my alphanumeric backup code just in case she is in fact holding out on me and pretending she can't read

Loyaultemelie I can't decide if that's amazing or worrying!

Normally I love tech but I need to buy a car for the first time in 20 years. I’m really hoping that cheaper cars don’t come with keyless tech. I like keys!

I saw an article suggesting to beat keyless car thefts by using a krooklok like I had 20 years ago. Again, I thought, what’s wrong with keys?

DH has a keyless car. Left me and the kids in it once while he went to get a car park ticket. DS asked me to turn the radio on and all hell broke loose as DH and the fob were "out of range" across the car park...
Also as long as the fob is nearby it will start and keep going until it is stopped or runs out of fuel. Aside from the obvious worry over theft (not a huge worry - not actually HIS car, it is a work one)…. I'm waiting for DH to get stuck, driving off with the fob on the windowsill...

onlyjustme so what actually happened please?

Grace212 Presumably the alarm went mental?

@Grace212 as Sparklfairy says the alarm went off!

Uh oh
Let me guess, the alarm decides to set itself when the fob holder leaves?

Good reminder - must check that any car I buy doesn’t have a built in alarm!!

Ugh! Rant alert!

1 Passwords! (And yes picklemepopcorn security questions too! I swear If ONE MORE call handler tries to tell me "the law says I have to ask you 20 questions" bollocks I will lose my shit! NO IT DOESN'T the law says that companies must make reasonable efforts to protect data, there are NO specifics on how many sodding security questions you ask me or what they are - I also object to having to give email address as a security answer because 9/10 they then use it to send you a fuck ton of spam! NO I am NOT "legally required" to tell you my email - its got to point I now have a separate email address I use JUST for this bullshit because I KNOW none of the emails I get to it are of any interest to me)

Every sodding company now has their own particular requirements for passwords...

"Must include an upper case letter, a lower case letter, a number, a punctuation mark, be at least 30 characters long, an iris scan, left thumbprint and bear no resemblance to anything you might reasonably be expected to remember..."

And then of course they remind you NOT to make a note of it anywhere!

Arghhhhhhhhh FUCK. OFF.

I swear most of my bloody emails are password reset bollocks!!!

Tabbymumz - your post perfectly illustrates why this is so ridiculous!

2 The way phone companies INSIST on constantly updating OS. PURELY money making (which is unnecessary as I'm sure they make enough money from the idiots who HAVE to have the latest phone just for appearances sake)

My last phone I had almost 5 years, it was still in pristine physical condition but eventually it got so I could no longer update the OS and the apps stopped working as the apps were also updated and gradually got to the stage where the required OS wasn't one I could download.

I've had this phone over 2 years, it's still in pristine condition. I've not updated the OS as when the first update was due the OS was beset with bugs, much in the media/online about it (WHY don't they withdraw/fix the OS when this happens?!) so I turned off the auto update thing and honestly thought no more about it...but now I'm way behind on updates, apps are starting to be affected as is my browser. I've spoken with apple and it could well be a case of updating taking several hours.

I am housebound, so very much rely on my phone to live/exist, suffer from extreme anxiety and barely sleep more than 4 hours a day, I'm on my phone the other 20 as a distraction and get very agitated/anxious if I can't use it.

I'm trying to work up the courage to sort it but honestly I'm dreading it.

I'm currently on version 9.3.4 update available 10.2.1 - I have NO idea what this means!

ALSO it's supposed to be easy to transfer all your shit onto a new phone when you DO have to succumb - nope! Took me about 2 weeks to get everything working "right" when I got this phone. My aunt has just got a new phone, she is NOT stupid or a technophobe in ANY WAY she's worked with computers her entire working life but she's struggling to get her phone to do what she wants it to despite several visits back to retailer/geniuses.

driving off with the fob on the windowsill...

You can't in my SMax, the key needs to be in the car.

3 I swear I WISH Somebody would properly drum into the designers of this stuff:

A - if it ain't broke it don't need fixing!

B - user friendly means easy to use for normal people NOT IT, specifically phone/tablet experts

C - people don't generally want an app or whatever to do a million things that most users will NEVER use but which are vulnerable to bugs which render the stuff users DO want it to do useless!

• case in point - Sainsburys app/site, was working FINE...until they decided to turn the timer clock into a spinning fucking jack o lantern last Halloween! Fuck knows how but as a result ever since the app has been glitchy as fuck! They've lost customers as a result, main issue is that customers with certain visa debit cards CANNOT check out their shopping via either the app or the site. So every week I have to "fill the basket" online but then PHONE and ask a call handler to checkout the order. All apparently because some plank thought a spinning Fucking jack o lantern would be "fun" NO! Leave the damn thing alone if it's working!

4 charging ports being different for every bloody device - again PURELY money making nonsense (and how many people actually pay the extortionate prices for eg Apple charging cables rather than buy much cheaper generic equivalents anyway?) total pita! As I say I'm housebound currently but dd is frequently out and about and caught out if she ends up out longer than planned eg hanging out at a friends but they don't have a charger she can use because the connections don't match! She does try and remember to take cable with her but understandably sometimes she thinks she's only "popping out" and so won't need it. We've also both been stuck if visiting an area we don't know where best to get a replacement cable and then the cable we've got stops working (why aren't they more robust?) and it's a case of trying several shops before finding one that sells the right one.

And yes I see they're starting that nonsense with earphones too. My current phone still has a "normal" Jack for me to use any earphones I can pick up quite cheaply anywhere, dd has had to spend out to replace if she's lost hers as her phone has a specific port connection.

"Voice recognition, especially over the phone. NEVER works with a <a class="break-all" href="http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU" target="_blank">Glaswegian accent" omg yes! Also a weegie, but due to dad being army my accent is seriously weird! Voice recognition NEVER works for me!

I like my fire tablet for streaming, light googling, but typing on it is MURDER because I seem to type too fast for it! It really should in my opinion be able to cope with reasonable typing speeds (I'm not superfast only about 55-60wpm at the moment - it'd be buggered if I were at my peak when I was working of 70/80 wpm!!)

"And yes, keyless cars: they should never have happened. They've made cars more vulnerable to theft, not less." Been reading the posts about this with interest, my last car was most definitely an older style (not even the windows were electric!) I've not driven for several years as the meds I was on before I wasn't allowed to. Hoping to be driving again when I can beat this bloody ocd/agoraphobia! But yes from friends/family having newer cars have heard a few times about them discovering they could open/probably drive cars other than their own but of same make/model - bonkers! Plus I've heard of the difficulties they've had if ANYTHING goes wrong with the key substitute - another case of "if it ain't broke" normal keys worked perfectly well for MANY years - why change that? Again I suspect a profit motive.

@Wanderings - agree with your whole post at 1809 yesterday

And...breathe

Again, I thought, what’s wrong with keys?

You can break in to those cars too.

You need to store a keyless fob out of range of the car or in one of those RFID sleeve things for contactless cards.

Every flipping day OP! Constantly having to tell my 12 year old to get off her phone, internet..

waves to fellow restarting drivers

Yes, cars with keys get stolen too. But I don’t want to have to worry about tech when buying a car. I didn’t even have an immobiliser thingy when I had a car before. So I am really hoping that old fashioned regular cars still exist.

I don’t want to think about storing car fobs. Also I think I did lose a car key in the past but had two spare so didn’t matter, I bet fibs etc are pricey to replace.

Oh, the phone updates....and still shit battery power. I’m considering going back to a dumbphone. I don’t really go online when out and about.

You could open my first car (Mk2 Ford Escort) with pretty much any key you wanted to 😂 A friend once accidentally drove away from a car park in the wrong car as she hadn't noticed it wasn't her Escort!

Soupdragon - probably outing and nothing to do with thread but my first car would ONLY go in reverse when first started - wouldn't go forward and wouldn't go in reverse at other times, didn't like driving in the rain, the driver door wouldn't open (had to get in via passenger door) utterly bonkers!

I agree with all the frustrations about sodding passwords. They have become the absolute bane of 21st century life.

Techies are obsessed with, as they see it, ‘increasing security’ by making passwords ever longer, more complex, more obscure, more difficult and time consuming to remember and type accurately. This process has now reached absurd levels where it causes endless daily frustration and wasted time for ordinary, non-technical users.

A completely new approach to account security is required which doesn’t rely on ever more complex passwords. Apple’s fingerprint recognition is a good example of a much better way of doing it. Sort it out, techies...