password fatigue

Image: Courtesy of vera on the verge

In the May 2008 issue of Reader's Digest, the Word of the Year committee from Macquarie Dictionary added password fatigue in its roster of new words.

In Word Spy, password fatigue is defined as "mental exhaustion and frustration caused by having to remember a large number of passwords."

Fortunately for me, my other phone, the ancient, trusty Nokia 6260, has an application requiring a password to access it. I use this app to store my usernames and passwords for various online accounts, ranging from the workplace passwords to Facebook accounts.

But then, I got to thinking: What if I lose this phone? I know this is a very old phone, and I doubt some loser would try to steal it, but ever since that iPod incident, I can't be so sure.

So what I do now to manage my myriad passwords is store all my usernames and passwords for all the online accounts I have, save it in a passworded-document, and attach this document in my Google mail. I then save this e-mail as a Draft (I don't send it to anybody, of course).

This way, I only need to remember two passwords: one for the Google mail, and one to open the document I stored in the Drafts section in my Google mail.

How about you? How do you manage password fatigue?