Dear Google: It's a goddamed blog
So lay off with the idea that fucking internet security needs to be continually checked!
My sister has a blog going, focusing on my niephling, her daughter. This is a great way for people to see pictures of her, and keep informed with the minutia of what's going on with her life. It's especially a boon for her grandparents, because none of them live near enough to my sister's family to see the cutie as often as they'd like.
My father being probably the biggest example of that. He's incontinent, barely mobile, and living in a long term care facility, now. While he could get down to the DC area in the event of a true emergency, the difficulty of that is such that I, for one, have no desire to do it for anything less than such disaster. For a number of reasons this past Christmas we got him a netbook so he could use the Wi-Fi in the facility to keep up with things online.
There's just one problem. He's not competent these days to remember a password, let alone several passwords. (I made the password for his user account on the computer the name of our dog - and he still managed to forget it, several times.) Expecting him to be able to remember a "strong" password is pushing fantasy on the order of manna from Heaven.
No problem, right? Just store all the passwords he'll need in the computer, and don't have any financial information going to accounts that computer can access. Simple.
For most site he wants to visit this works quite well.
Not so much for Google's Blogger site. The ratmunchers there have decided, for reasons that seem good, to have a security regimen where even if the allow stored passwords are in the browser - you still have to re-enter things every two weeks, or so.
My father cannot remember the account name he's using for Google, and they want him to keep putting it in every two weeks? What part of not mentally competent do I need to repeat?
The thing that's really fucking infuriating about this is that it's security for a fucking, goddamned blog! This nonsense is all out of proportion to what the risks involved with this may be. I can understand that some people would want that kind of security for their blogs, and that's their choice. But by making this a requirement for everyone using their service they're going to have the effect of making the whole thing less secure, because now we've got to start writing the passwords down everywhere so that when my father needs them someone will be able to find them for him. (Even though he'll never ask anyone for help, unless they see he's already having a problem. Have I mentioned not mentally competent enough, yet?)
Google should at least have some way to opt out of this nonsense security protection. It is one more headache I don't need to deal with, now, thank you.
