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.
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.
Did you set Firefox as the default iPhone password manager?
Can you do this? I’ve tried setting other passwords managers as default, but it seems like with apple’s fuckery, they only allow you to use the internal manager.
Yeah. Go into the system settings app, Autofill and Passwords. Select only the “AUTOFILL FROM” for Firefox.
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.
Send her invoice
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.
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.
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)
Have a conversation and listen to her. I’m guessing that her behaviors are driven by an emotion. Maybe she’s overwhelmed by the complexity. Most people who say that they don’t care about security actually prioritize ease of use over security. Unfortunately good security can be hard.
If/when you speak to her, don’t try to solve her problems during that conversation. Meet her where she’s at and empathize with her. When she’s done, you get to express your concerns and see her reacting. I’m guessing that you’re concerned that she is putting her finances at risk. Explain your concern to her.
Once you both come to a shared understanding, then you can come with some ideas for her to react to. Again, dig deep into her concerns, talking through them. You’re going to need to let some things go. It’s her life and her money and you’ll be there to help in a nonjudgemental way if anything bad happens and then you can have another conversation after the dust has settled.
I ended up with my parents having 3 passwords. One for their bank, one for their health stuff and one for everything else. The bank and health ones are long and difficult to guess, the other one is easy to remember and “good enough”.
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).
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.
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.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
You can still just hide the password field upon typing an SSO email address — iirc Atlassian does this.
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)
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.
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.
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.
I set up LastPass for my parents but they refuse to use it. My mom got locked out of her Facebook account and can’t regain access because she doesn’t know the password, doesn’t know the email it was registered with, and her phone died so she can’t prove any prior access. Too bad so sad. Still won’t use LastPass.
Locked out of Facebook sounds like it did her a favor
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).
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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My family used to both say I was the need and can and need to fix all their shit, AND anytime anything went wrong it MUST be Mt 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.
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.
Here’s to wishing Webauthn will suddenly take off.
won’t fix the problem.
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
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”.
I have my 80+ year old mom using Bitwarden. She has some issues creating new logins but for the most part it is working great on her desktop and her iPhone.
I have her pointed at my own Vaultwarden server and I know her master password if I really need to get in.
Yeah. Everytime I’m for a visit, I have to show my mom again how to copy/paste things, access files on her USB drive, where to click to do an update,…
But she loves Bitwarden. Has been app consistent in using random passwords for logins, both on desktop and mobile.
My wife is like this. I just set her up with Chrome’s password manager despite the fact that I’m a Firefox and Bitwarden user. Works in Chrome, on Android, and on iOS - she doesn’t have to use Chrome on iOS, you just have to install Chrome and set it as the iOS password manager and it still works with all apps and Safari. She doesn’t care if Google has her whole life on file and I’m not paid enough to care for her.
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
