Can’t cope with tech and the endlessth checks and passwords. I’m 55 but feel 105!!!

[HeBeaverandSheBeaver]

Trying to do some paperwork for a new job and it’s impossible. Download this app. My pc won’t accept the app. Try on my phone. Make an account. Change password. Try to open training doc. Enter password. Oops password not accepted. Try to change password. Now not being sent new link. This is toooooooo hard. No support as all remote. I hate tech I hate tech I hate tech.

Well yes because the companies are making millions in profit already…

I hear you, and agree OP

As is their right. Indeed, their entire reason for existing.

This is me in every single discussion and is why I have no friends 😄

Prudential want me to do everything online. I dutifully start the process, then find I can’t progress because I apparently have an account. Try to log in and I’m told I need to set up an account. At that point, I give up.

They think they do, using this method:

”Pleeeeeeeeeease leave us a review!!”

No, I don’t want to do yet more admin to boost their coffers, to rate my “experience”, thank you very much.

I agree, it is all so much more complicated than it needs to be. With online shopping, I have a rule that if the process takes more than five minutes, I don’t spend my money there (if I have the choice).

But be very, very afraid of something presented as a silver bullet.
”Chip in your brain!”
”Digital ID will do away all those other pesky forms of ID!”
”This app will streamline your parking experience!”
”This app will prevent further lockdowns!” It didn’t. It gave us a pingdemic, as well as another lockdown.

Don't use a password-protected spreadsheet, use a proper password manager.

But, it is essential in 2026 to write passwords down somehow. There's just too many of them.

Unless I have no choice, I will not use an organisation that won't let me use the XKCD 936 password style.

I still get them like that.

Oh and if that’s not bad enough. When you go to certain shops and go to the till to pay for your items, they ask you if you have downloaded their app!
Or ask you if you want a 10% discount and that you need to download their app to create an account to get the discount!
I would decline the 10% discount and would rather pay the full price so that I don’t have to go through this pathetic rigmarole. Just let me shop in peace ffs!

Oh and asking “would you like a receipt?”
I answer “yes please”, only to be told they don’t give printed receipts and to give them my email address which means I have to spell the whole of my email address out to them! Then receive my receipt by email.

Just fuck off with it already!!!

Someone might cut your chip out of you. There's already been a case of a man who fitted a finger print scanner to his car, so the car thieves cut off his finger.

I am very much opposed to using my body or anything embedded in my body as a means of authenticating myself.

YANBU

Thats all I can say

Had to set something up the other day and it demanded a USER NAME (separate to my email address).

There was no reason at all to need one; it isn’t that kind of thing - but I have to remember whatever I ended up with to log back in. I’ve forgotten it by now, of course.

Totally agree. I could cry with how many circles I went in today trying to access a letter from Ofsted for work. Oh and the child maintenance site … if someone wants to rob my £6 child maintenance and knows my twelve digit account number, my password, memorable word, third letter from my memorable code and where the end of the rainbow is, go right afuckinghead.

solidarity - we couldn’t stay with our insurer when we got a new car as the exact model number wasn’t listed on their system - even phoning them didn’t help as they couldn’t bypass the list either ! We had to go elsewhere just because they found a match. It’s ludicrous

I ordered something online last night, during payment I had to do the whole approve payment thing so had to then use my bank app which took ages to open and then I’d lost the page I was ordering on. I wasn’t sure if it had gone through or not. Lo and behold it hadn’t and I had to do whole thing again.

Yes but you can’t say we’re not willing to pay for better service but also that the companies are making enormous profits. Therefore we alreaDY ARE paying enough for them to offer those better services, they just don’t want to.

I write all my passwords down in an old fashioned paper ringbinder notebook.

my one-step-down-from-C-suite partner told me that their worldwide company has been using a physical safe with a paper ringbinder notebook for the last three years!

Just when you get a few key things easily accessible on your phone, a fucking upgrade fucks it all up overnight. “Hola” AAAAAARGH

Wait until you have power of attorney for two elderly parents, and have to do all their banking and life admin for them with this rigmarole. You think endless passwords and security are bad now, just you wait until you are acting for someone else. It’s a fresh hell of passwords and security checks and difficulty. It is fucking relentless and they add another layer of impossibility on top of the already soul destroying ‘authenticating the crap out of everything system’ that already exists. Holy shit trying to get a parent with dementia to turn their head in the right direction to capture their Face ID for yet another stupid bloody system so that the state can take their house to pay for care - and I’m rocking in the corner doing all the POA shit for nothing but abuse.

ah now I feel better after that rant 😂

YADNBU and god knows how bad this will be in another 10 years time. Worse is download another app for every bloody shitty car park in the whole of the UK. Jesus wept - I just wanna park!

Me too!!! I still send actual letters, I'm quite capable of using tech but it's a whole other level when the website's app's app has another downloadable linky thing that doesn't work. It genuinely makes me quite deranged. I'm currently experiencing issues as I can't get into the student loan website because I had an account 20 years ago for my stepson and can't remember the email address or phone number I used then. So I'm going to end in circles right now. I'm quite jealous of my mum. She's refused a smartphone, computer, even a debit card, never mind a credit card. So if she wants to pay for something she just pays cash.

I do that too but blank out the middle characters

Yep. making passwords more complex isn’t making stuff more secure. I know some things are not as secure as they should be but I can’t face upgrading. Work email password and the one for log in must be changed regularly but I now use a pattern

I have a sort of pattern but I’m forever re-setting my Apple password anc my email. I’ve resisted using my face or fingerprint because I can reset or get text email but I thought if it doesn’t recognise my face I’m stuffed. All photos are on my phone so would not be able to print one to cheat.

I can’t put a link but love an old Michael McIntyre sketch - if you put his name and password on YouTube it should come up

My 86 year old FIL moans about this non stop- he can’t cope mentally with an app based life -

It’s a Kafkaesque nightmare sometimes, and I work in an IT company. Unfortunately cybercrime is ubiquitous and multi factor authentication is necessary.
I’m in my 50s too.