I’ve become the tech guy, and family are extremely entitled to my services. My mom especially. BTW I can’t cut her out, because I still live with her and she EXPECTS me to fix anything computer related. She won’t take no for an answer.
I’ve tried to keep track of her passwords with a password manager, I’ve spent literally 8 hours in a single day filling out captchas and replacing passwords, and I’ve spent even more time trying to teach my mom how to use the manager.
She CAN’T learn it, and always makes a new password, which she doesnt keep track of and expects me to fix it. What the hell do it do? She uses firefox, with auto refill on, but it doesn’t autofill on her iphone.
Stop helping, she uses you as a crutch because the option is there
Tell her you’ll fix it if she gives you power of attorney.
No, I’m not joking.
If you are having to spend 8 hours to figure out how to help her manage her basic affairs, if you are constantly teaching her how to use a password manager and she cannot figure it out, she has diminished cognitive capacity.
If she has already delegated you to be in charge of all her account logins, she’s basically already given you de facto control over them, already acknowledged she isn’t capable of of managing her own affairs.
Gather a bunch of other evidence that she has trouble with basic tasks, can’t reliably perform basic household activities, manage finances, whatever, approach a lawyer and get the power of attorney document(s) drawn up.
EDIT: // Holy shit, just saw your other comment:
Well I also cook everything, grocery shop and fix everything (basic electrical, plumbing, woodworking, installations, etc).
Yeah, you are already functionally her caretaker.
Depending on the state you’re in (assuming you are in the US) you might be able to actually get yourself certified as her caretaker without much or any actual input from her, before you pursue power of attorney. //
This solves the cut out problem.
…
After that, explain your solution:
Print out a big list of all those passwords and logins for her.
Meanwhile, you’ve got them all as well, presumably you can just use her password manager and have access to it.
If she resets a password and can’t figure out how to log back in, fix it back to something you know, but don’t let her use this account for one week.
After a week, print out a new list for her with the new password you’ve set.
If she resets another password while in a 7 day timeout period, well now it’ll be two weeks for both passwords to become available to her, etc.
This may sound like too much, but she’s a cognitively diminished entitled brat, who has already conditioned you into being a doormat who is expected to waste a seemingly endless amount of time and effort to solve problems she creates, problems that people without a live-in technical support agent pay hundreds of dollars to solve.
She will not learn if she has no impetus to. She’s obviously used the ‘tough love’ model on you, use it back on her.
If she complains about this, doesn’t matter, you have power of attorney, send her to an old folks home, sell the house and move to an apartment, or rent a room out if it or something.
Having me put in as her caretaker might be a really good idea. I do basically everything, and soon I’ll be doing all of the driving, since her own ability is highly diminished. She is a total control freak. Even though I have been living here for like 3 years, and cooking everything, she still doesn’t let me organize the kitchen the way I’d like to. She has so much random crap that she puts everywhere. We have a dozen pots and pans but only use 3. She also buys EVERYTHING in bulk, so there is always so much shit everywhere. BUYING 100 ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER DOESN’T SAVE THAT MUCH MONEY.
She also loves to collect tons of free food from pantry’s and stuff them into the fridge or home pantry as if it’s a bottomless pit. She always thinks “more food, more better” but it just leads to ingredients that I never use cause its 2feet behind tons of random shit. Sorry for the rant. I need it.
I had the feeling man (don’t know your gender but I mean it as a term of solidarity)…
I had the feeling that your situation was significantly worse than just IT problems.
I’ve managed to be in basically the situation you are in, once with a family member, another time with a partner.
Definitely look into how the formal process for being declared her caretaker works in your state/county.
Theres a good chance that there’s some kind of non profit group in your county, or pro bono lawyer or some kind of legitimate body that can help you through the particulars of how that works.
Definitely get as many relevant, official ‘i am her caretaker’ statuses and/or required evidence of such lined up before you try to start with the power of attorney stuff.
Getting durable power of attorney / living will / whatever your particular locale calls it, that’ll be much easier if you are already her caretaker.
… But yeah.
You’re not screaming into the void on this one…
I hear you.
Don’t try to do a million things at once, don’t completely do a 180 overnight and start bossing her around right off the bat… take the time to move through all the red tape correctly.
3, full, deep breaths, all the way in, hold for 20 seconds, all the way out.
I’d give you a hug if I could.
your problem is not a technical issue, I’d ask for interpersonal advice on how to deal with your situation with your mother instead.
Good luck.
She also loves to collect tons of free food from pantry’s and stuff them into the fridge or home pantry as if it’s a bottomless pit.
Holy shit wtf, are you me from an alternate universe?
My grandma keeps going to collect food that is meant for people in poverty, even though her daughter (aka: my mother) has enough resources to survive and probably should leave those stuff for other people more in need.
This sounds like Filial Piety on steorids
I’d call it reaping what you sow.
Jesus christ
just wait for the day when your kids will think you have diminished cognitive ability simply because you will have hard time using tech of that time
Well I won’t be having any kids… never wanted them, can’t afford them anyway…
…but if I did have kids, who lived with me and supported me in my old age, I’d be humble and grateful for their help, and recognize that declining cognitive ability is just a thing that happens as you get older.
My family used to both say I was the nerd and can and need to fix all their shit, AND anytime anything went wrong it MUST be my fault since I’m the one “tinkering” with and fixing their shit.
This is a minor part of a huge amount of reasons I worked my ass off to get fully independent and no contact with my family anymore.
Ugh I hate whenever something goes wrong the blame is always placed on the last guy who worked on it. If you ever build a PC for someone, you better believe you are gonna be tech support for that thing FOREVER.
I’d understand if you had issues immediately, or days after, but if its been weeks, months or even years? Gtfo. Thats longer than most free warranties.
at some point, you gotta throw in the towel and let her use one password for everything. not ideal at all, sure, but it’s not the end of the world as long as it’s complex enough.
or get her a notebook, or a note-taking app, and jot down all the passwords for every account (not the generated ones from the password manager; too complex).
if your issues are more of the “help me, now!!” variety and you want to keep her off your back, tell her that you’re busy and can help in ten minutes or an hour or at some scheduled time. if her stuff is urgent, too bad, your work is too. show her that you’re not at her beck and call, and then help her at that scheduled time; you’d be surprised at how fast the problems reside.
Honestly even though she is pretty abusive, she’s told me that I’m the sole beneficiary in he trust. My sisters went no contact and she’s divorced.
With how much money she has, and how easily she gets hacked and scammed, I dont trust using single passwords. She also makes accounts for EVERYTHING. She even had an account for a fucking calculator. With the variety of stuff she makes accounts for, I wouldn’t trust a single password.
She doesn’t have money dude, nobody like this does. You have no way of knowing if she had more debt than assets.
Just use Chrome everywhere, and sync it to Google. There should be chrome for iPhone.
That’s not true. The wealthiest people in the world are abusive as fuck. Is it possible she’s swimming in mountains of debt that outweigh her value? It’s entirely possible. But it certainly isn’t a guarantee
Right, but it’s not healthy to rely on getting it. If you do, you have double the job of trying to prevent them from bleeding themselves dry.
Best to think it’s a myth, and then get the chance of a nice surprise later.
She’s smart enough to have a financial advisor, and honestly they’re the reason she has as much wealth as she does. Other than that she is kind of a corpse. Shell lie in bed for days at a time, her screen time is often around 18-22 hours per day.
What about a password type? Like the password has the same format, but is different for each site? Like if her birthday is May 25 and her favorite dog’s name is Bunny, she can start it with that and then finish it with a differing sentence?
0525BunnyThisIsMyAmazon! 0525BunnyThisIsMyBank!
, et cetera.
It’s not the most secure, but at least it should keep it from being brute forced and give her things she can easily remember. And if there’s a leak and they have to be changed, you can just change the front part.
i get it. i don’t blame you for maintaining a status quo for the purposes of inheritance. i hope you find a good solution in this thread at least!
What about using OneKey so that she mostly needs to worry about remembering a PIN? It looks like you can set it up to automatically open your password manager. Might also need to synch her browsers.
As an added bonus, she would have to hold on to the key without losing it, because if she lost it, she’s effectively locked out of accounts forever.
This isn’t great, but it’s what I ended up resorting to for my mom who refused to use any service, browser setting, or saved file:
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Make a “master” password with upper-case characters and digits (e.g., M45T3R). Memorize it or write it down.
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Interleave the characters with those of the domain the password is for (e.g., for google.com: gMo4o5gTl3eR). She can type the master password first, then put the cursor at the start and type each letter of the domain name hitting the right arrow after each letter.
As long as she remembered the master password, she could reconstruct the others on the fly. A human could still look at the result and figure out the pattern, but at least it protected her from automated tools.
She can get past the master password, but she can’t comprehend finding the password for the correct service, copying it, and pasting it. I don’t really know why she can’t scroll down the list to find “CVS” and copy the password, but she can’t.
I’m looking for a system that a baby could use.
This scheme does not need a list, and if necessary could be simplified enough, some common part with first three letters of the site:
- For Instagram: my-memorable-password-Ins
- For Facebook: my-memorable-password-Fac
The memorable part could be the initials of a favorite song lyric, or something: nggyunglydIns, nggyunglydFac etc.
But the suggestion of using the Chrome password manager sounds like it will be seamless. I don’t know if it would work on IOS, but on Android it fills passwords in for many apps, not just web pages.
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Part of the problem isn’t necessarily you or her, I feel like websites are increasingly hostile toward password managers by coming up with arbitrary rules, weird JavaScript hacks and annoying two page sign-in forms.
I’m a web developer but even I get frustrated with how websites want to hijack input fields and do validation with shithole JavaScript frameworks instead of simpler HTML5 validation (only for frontend obviously, the server should still validate on the backend).
annoying two page sign-in forms
What is up with this?
It’s a thing that makes single sign-on easier and more extensible. If you have a login email matching a server side rule, you get kicked over to a different auth provider (e.g. Okta).
Still drives me absolutely fucking bazonkers though.
You can still just hide the password field upon typing an SSO email address — iirc Atlassian does this.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
They’re all bad, but Firefox is terrible about this. Twice already in January I’ve had to make new passwords to pay bills. I was in my car when i did it and now i have no idea what those new passwords are. I’m so sick of letters, numbers, and special characters! No one is out there attempting to guess my gas company login password - they’re buying it from someone who hacked the gas company.
What does any of that have to do with Firefox?
It doesn’t. Unless they’re talking about saving their passwords in Firefox, in which case it sounds like they’re not using a Mozilla account and their credentials aren’t synced.
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Okay no one has said this, but feel you. When I was younger I was so happy my family thought I was smart and leaned into it. It’s great, they want something installed, they want advice, it works. Then they get greedy, they stop respecting my time, I get chastised for not answering my phone because they HAVE to get into their email RIGHT NOW.
So, if you’re feeling all of this, it may be time to start setting boundaries. Some helpful things:
Mom, if you want to ask for my help then you can’t just undo my help right after I leave. If you want my help, you will use what I set up, you will use this password manager and you will put in the effort to learn it. I offer these services for free, Geek Squad would charge you $200 for this service alone. If you can’t do it that’s fine, but then you can go to them for help.
I understand that it’s not working right now but I’m not a 24/7 service. I can help you in <reasonable time frame>.
At some point some older people just stop trying to learn anything new. I also worked geek squad, which is where I saw this first hand. Some very very basic problem solving and just the will to learn something new will take them 90% of the way, but most have lost those basic skills. For those, well, politely you have to tell them that they have to rely on others, and that’s why geek squad exists.
A lot of geeks laugh at the $200 price tag. That’s ridiculous! I could do that in 10 minutes! Correct! The fix is usually the easiest part of the job. That’s why there’s only 1 or 2 actual repair techs per best buy, but 10 or more desk agents who just sit and listen to the elderly talk about how much they hate computers and refuse to learn it.
Yeah, she definitely has that problem of refusing to learn anything. She has a really terrible mindset, that now shes retired, she’s never gonna bother to learn anything cause shes gonna die anyway. It’s extremely frustrating to deal with because she’s completely helpless.
Does she say that to you explicitly ? If so, ask her: If she’s just going to die, why does it matter if she’s locked out of her accounts? If she has a reason to access her accounts, she has a reason to learn how to access them.
On a mental health note, the last of Erik Erikson’s stages of development relates to old age/end of life, and the choice is between dignity or despair. If you see your mother trending toward despair, she might need help with her mental health, such as seeing a therapist.
You also might consider therapy for yourself. I get the impression you’ve got some boundary issues with your mother that you could improve. Good luck to you
I don’t mean to be rude, but maybe stop forcing her to use a tool that you like but she doesn’t. I’m tech savvy but I also think that password managers are a pain in the ass to use. Just let her choose a password of her choice for every service, give her a little paper notebook and let her note down all the passwords. Tell her to make them long and secure and different for every service. Tell her to store the notebook in a safe place. Done.
Again, she has trouble keeping track of things. Ive given her a printout with her passwords and she loses the paper, and doesnt know how to print it, or is straight up too lazy to type in a long complicated password, so she just makes a new random one.
She can’t even keep track of the new passwords she makes, so I dont think this would make a very big difference
The suggestion was for a little notebook, not a printout.
Have you tried a little notebook?
A notebook is more of a “thing” than a piece of paper is. A notebook is the sort of thing a person can keep on a bookshelf. A sheet of paper is gonna live on a flat surface until it’s thrown away.
Try the notebook.
This, and it should be passwords she chooses and can remember (at least the ones she uses the most). Not some random mix of letters and numbers.
Also let her save them in her browser.
Take a picture with her phone? Then it will be in her gallery. Or frame the paper and hang it on the wall.
Obviously terrible for security so depends on what is more important to you.
That works right up until you have to change one of the passwords.
Realistically, how often does this happen?
Maybe find a solution when it happens.
This is how I approach all problems in my life, +
My main problem is that she is CONSTANTLY changing passwords. I try to teach her how to use her passwords manager, and have a printout in the vault, but she is too lazy to get the password, and type it in. She is too lazy to even track the new password she makes.
Then make it easier for her to retrieve a password. A vault is not a good place. Give her a little notebook she can put in a shelf or drawer.
How many password breaches have there been?
Perhaps many, but I have over 500 accounts in my password manager, yet none of have been leaked per the password exposure report (which I assume is based on the https://haveibeenpwned.com/ database).
So perhaps the problem is overblown in practice, assuming you don’t use the same password in many sites.
My mom signs up for a lot of sketchy shit and has been pwned like 30 times across her emails.
Any chance your mom knows how to work a spreadsheet? Mine is old school and just keeps an encrypted spreadsheet synced between her devices so that she only has to remember one password
A decent compromise might be to pick a short phrase she can remember, and make all her passwords that phrase+the name of the service.
Like her bank password would be “iloveop+bank”, her Netflix would be iloveop+netflix", etc.
Okay, now I am curious, how are password managers a pain in the ass to use? Mine has only made my life easier and better. Even my non-tech savvy wife (whose password was the “I forgot my password” button) uses bitwarden extremely smoothly. Her password game has made a full 180 with very little instruction from me.
You can use Bitwarden as the native password manager on an iPhone. And that can sync to the desktop version. I have all my passwords in one place. And on the iPhone since it’s the system password manager it works with apps too.
Alternatively, get her a small notebook, write things down and tell her to use that.
I’ve had good luck getting people into using bitwarden and appreciating it. Def recommend trying to get her on it, as long as she can remember her master password to access the rest
doesn’t need to remember the master password if you set up an unlock PIN. Actually I think maybe it’s a bad idea to let them remember the master password, because they may just type it in everywhere expecting it to work…
I forgot about the pin. Mine almost never asks me for mine, it always wants the master password when auto filling, but that’s likely bc of something in my settings.
the pin is a per-device thing, you need to set it up first to use it
I think I just needed to reset it, I recall accidentally hitting No on the prompt after setting the PIN initially and not having a way to go back and choose Yes to unlock with the PIN. Reset the PIN and got to say Yes on that prompt this time
I tried using Bitwarden for my mom, but it was too complicated.
Make a document with all of the passwords and save it to her desktop. Print it, too, and leave it in a drawer.
OP says part of their problem is that their mom wants to access the passwords from her phone.
Sounds like mom can’t fuck with inputting passwords at all.
Yep. She CANNOT copy and paste. I’ve tried to teach her, long hold and tap copy, hold and tap paste, but it just doesn’t click.
She wants you to be her bitch. If she could she’d make you take a shit for her.
Old people aren’t stupid. Somehow they got that old. “Can’t” nah, “won’t”.
Here’s to wishing Webauthn will suddenly take off.
won’t fix the problem.
Why not? Maybe because I’m in the Apple walled garden I’ve been spoiled, but it’s literally just scan face/finger (depending on device) and go on. It’s dead simple, and if websites would stop prompting for a username/password beforehand that would be even better.
Because webauthn does not give anything that a proper password manager couldn’t automate anyway
won’t fix the problem.
honestly, with that level of carelessness or stupidity they really shouldn’t use a smartphone
honestly, with that level of carelessness or stupidity they really shouldn’t use a smartphone
Get a Pixel?
Use the firefox browser on iphone? You could make an account that links passwords.
She always uses the app versions of things. I’ve tried to teach her how to fetch the synced passwords from the firefox app, but she can’t comprehend that.
Enable system-wide autofill:
Firefox for iOS (version 40 and above)
- Open the Settings app on your phone.
- Tap Passwords.
- Tap Password Options.
- Tap AutoFill Passwords and Passkeys.
- Tap Firefox.
(source)
I don’t understand this answer. I use Firefox on my phone and I have Bitwarden, my password manager of choice, installed. Autofill works great, it prompts me to unlock Bitwarden with my thumbprint and it’s one tap to fill the username and password.
Get a blank notebook with alphabetic tabs and write all her passwords in there. Label it “crochet projects” or something. A non-techy friend of mine does that. At first I was horrified but it’s a lot safer for her than post-it notes on the monitor.
It’s also, in some ways, safer than some centralized password managers.
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so part of your room and board is tech support services? sounds fair.
Well I also cook everything, grocery shop and fix everything (basic electrical, plumbing, woodworking, installations, etc). It’s not even the IT gripe, it’s that she ALWAYS resets her password, doesn’t keep it, and expects me to fix it. Its that she breaks it, and makes me fix it.
Then tell her the only way to log in is via email magic login links?
Edit wait that won’t work, some services send “password reset links” that don’t log you in
This doesn’t sound like a healthy living arrangement, my friend.
I live I a place with crazy high rents and my only other option would be homelessness. Im still in training/education, and if I had to stop, id never be able to get better paying job and I’d be a wageslave the rest of my life.
Honestly we are relatively upperclass, and after some financial lessons I realize its so fucking expensive to be poor.
I hope circumstance treats you better soon, best of luck
My mom’s password manager is a pen and paper notebook. It’s not ideal, but it keeps me from having to reset everything every month, and she chooses slightly more complex passwords since she doesn’t have to remember them (even though she is slowly memorizing them)
This is the answer.
For many people who don’t understand technology, the solution isn’t more technology. Is a password notebook technically less secure? Yes. But it’s much better and more understandable than what she really wants, which is the same username and password for everything.
Plus, a notebook is great way to pass information that’s not just usernames and password. It’s in invaluable resource in case of death. Digital is great, but physical copies are important.
Out of all my family and friends, if I had to pick one person to save my life based on wether they could find the correct password to a site or not. I’d go with my 80 year old grandma. She does it with pen and paper. It’s a god damn blessing doing tech support for her, she has every little detail on there.
My wife does this with notecards. I have to hide the passwords on my PC so I don’t have to dig through her notes.
