Lately, the process of accessing apps and websites has grown dizzying. “I’m in password hell,” a colleague confided to me recently. “Every login attempt is playing the lottery.” The problem is not just the sheer number of digital accounts, all of which require their own password, ideally unique and unguessable (which usually also means un-memorizable). It’s the pileup of solutions to that problem: all of the different layers of software offering to remember your passwords, the six-digit codes sent to your phone, the authenticator apps, the passkeys.
There’s also websites that for some reason only request a username/e-mail and then send you a one time login code, requiring me to open my e-mail program instead of having a one click login with my password manager…
These drive me up the wall. If you email me a signin code at login and offer a “forgot password” reset by email, then the password is cosmetic. Just get rid of it ffs.
Passwords were easier. All you needed was a good manager like Bitwarden and that was it. Maybe 2FA for money and corporate.
Yesterday my partner asked me about passkeys and I had to finally have the talk with her.
I don’t even want to comment on the fact that everything gets very very hard for older people. My mother calls me every time some application changes the authentication method and almost never understands why the change is needed.
Website enshitified. Had to use lynx to see the text for more than 1 second:
$ torsocks lynx https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/08/password-manager-login-difficulty/688396/?gift=A_VYuI0Bs4X1cJsYonaJVE29HRH1L8Ei13mJ3d1owSA
