How to deal with Mom who CANNOT learn how to use a password manager, but demands I "fix it"
How to deal with Mom who CANNOT learn how to use a password manager, but demands I "fix it"
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.
Use something that has solid iPhone support. Bitwarden has integration with iPhone to replace the built in password manager. That’s what I do. It
Then on desktop, I use the bitwarden plugin for safari, Firefox, and chrome.
It even works for passkeys and syncs them between devices. Even between iPhone and desktop. It intercepts the iPhone passkey manager.
Then it even works for her apps on iPhone.
Seriously, it’s a very seamless, elegant solution.
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.
Go to another account she hasn't messed up on her phone, and make her watch as you use the password manager to get in. Then, you can tell her for sure that the tech is working, and you've done your part, but you cannot fix her behavior. If she wants to keep resetting her passwords all the time, that's on her, otherwise, she'll have to put a small amount of time and effort into adapting to using the password manager.
If she isn't going to follow your suggestions and advice, why is she asking you for help? If she sincerely wants help, she needs to make an effort on her side to follow through.
This is a problem with psychology and boundaries, not a tech issue.
Stop helping, she uses you as a crutch because the option is there
My mother-in-law was super dependent on my wife for everything related to technology. Banking apps, netflix, sending and receiving money, anything related to the government she had her do it. Then we moved a few states away. We came for a visit a few months ago and guess what? She manages to do it all by herself now. Even calling an uber or finding the cat videos she likes she was able to do herself now.
The point being: she doesn't want to and won't learn because she has someone to do it for her. Since you can't make her do it, then you just have to accept it unfortunately.
My mom resented anything tech related. I knew she was smart enough to learn it, she just hated being forced into it so we always had to do it for her.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Do what I do with my wife. I say she has to learn how to do it and I sit down in front of her and make her take notes and then have her try doing it. I've finally been able to get her to do some stuff on the computer on her own.
Would she use one of those little password-keeper books? It's not as secure as a password manager, but it might help get her self-sufficient.
You could start not knowing how to do things, give slower answers, just give bad customer service. Or ask her if whatever she's trying to do can wait until she gets home to get computer.
I know the feeling of wanting to help, it's part of why I became a librarian. I also know the pain of old folks coming in and asking the same questions. I had one lady, really sweet, that would come in and ask for the phone numbers to maybe 3 businesses a day. Like, we'd show her how to look it up, we'd walk her through it on a public terminal, she'd still ask us again the next day. It gets frustrating and you pick your battles.
At least I could go home after a shift and stop being the tech-knower. It doesn't sound like you get to and that sucks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 affors 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.
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.
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
PEBKAC.
But seriously, she needs to understand that, even though she (presumably) taught you how to tie your shoes, you don't keep having her tie them for you. At some point there is no problem except that she isn't accepting the solution.
Keeping with the analogy, if a person just refuses to tie shoes, not wearing shoes is always an option...
She never taught me to tie my shoes. I didnt know until I was like 15.
Both my mom and dad were workaholics, and my babysitter was a far closer parent than they were
Power of Attorney
Instead of dropping a system on her that she can't/won't use, try asking her what she wants to do. You can explain why passwords need to be different, but you can simplify it by sharing passwords across sites that don't matter. So someone gets her BBC password and finds they can also use it on the Daily Fail, whoop-de-doo. Different pw for the bank.
Simplify your own life. You have to do free tech support for your Mum, and to be fair she changed your nappies for years, but everyone else is expected to trade, especially if they expect you to pay for their services when you need them.
Of course tinkering with something makes it your fault any time anything goes wrong, and the lesson we learn from that is .....?
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.
Can't you setup whatever manager to autofill the password?
Not every website is set up properly to allow that to work seamlessly.
True but enough do that it annoyed me to the point of disabling the autofill on my system, so maybe for this person it would be an improvement
Fuckin hell im thankful my parents are cool. I need to do something nice for them
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 tried using Bitwarden for my mom, but it was too complicated.
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
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.
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!
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".
Only option really is to show her how to reset her password. Sounds like she's already doing it, just tell her that's how you log in, you let it autofill, and if it doesn't work you click forgot password and check your email and that's how passwords work now
Give her a notebook
Apologies if it's been mentioned already, but since most sites require access to the account email to reset the password, could you set up a filter in the email that forwards to you then deletes any email that has like "password reset" "account recovery" or other common variations in the subject?
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.
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.
Take the phone and “work” on it for a few hours, hand it back still not working.
“I don’t know, we tried this before and just can’t get it to work again.”
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.
Show her it works, set boundaries, and enforce them. She cannot use you as a crutch for her inability.
If all else fails, fix it one last time, and tell her she needs to go to best buy (or whatever tech store offers tech support) for the next time and when she asks for you to fix it, just stand your ground and make her pay for someone else to deal with her shit.
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 mom is great at using the edit menu to copy and paste but I fear trying to get her to right click. What she does now works, so don’t mess with it.
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.
Maybe just tell your mom that since she had changed her password, there is a 30 minutes delay before she can login.
Maybe if there are consequences things will change?
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.
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.
Part of the problem is a lot of programs that people who understand tech think is simple or obvious is actually stupidly wrote and confusing and illogically set up.
Older people rely on logic. And most interfaces are the opposite of logical.
Younger people have this idea of "press a bunch of buttons and once you see how it works, then memorize the steps ".
I'm going to guess that she has said something to the effect of "why is this so complicated"?
The only issue I take is that she won't keep track of the new password that she creates. That to me is laziness.
Older people rely on logic. And most interfaces are the opposite of logical.
Younger people have this idea of "press a bunch of buttons and once you see how it works, then memorize the steps ".
That's the exact opposite of my experience.
I tried to explain Windows logically to the seniors in my family. This is a window. This is the taskbar, it shows your open windows. This is a folder, it contains your documents.
Every time we would start over with these abstractions which are supposed to make logical sense, the very foundation of Windows' early success with casual users. None of it ever stuck with them.
They would instead write down every minor step to achieve a specific goal in a specific way, so they could basically control Windows without paying any attention to context presented on the screen. That's the only thing that worked for them.
That’s the one thing old people just don’t do: they won’t read what’s presented on the screen.
I think it comes from growing up before GUIs, so they think of an interface as a set of buttons on a console. There was very little reason to read an interface back when they were all physical; you either knew what each button did or you didn’t and you only had to memorize it once.
Like, the controls of a T-38 tank are always the same. The controls of a ‘57 Chevy are always the same.
Once GUIs came into play, people started interacting with orders of magnitude more control interfaces, so the concept of “there is no manual; the interface is self-documenting” came into existence.
Now you’re supposed to learn the interface and use it on the first encounter, which means reading what the interface is saying.
that's roughly what I experience too. It's like if they would see a colorful pane of glass, but could not make a distinction between the "boxes" on the screen
I dont feel like government forms and taxes are any more intuitive.
on the contrary
Set "office hours" and stick to them. She can make a list of things to do. Maybe it needs to be 20 min every evening, or maybe just once or twice a week. My partner has a similar (but more minor) problem, and this has worked both increasing self-help and making the time spent more enjoyable. Though I'm sure it helps that the needy person doesn't live with us. Good luck
fix it!!
Ok, make sure not to change the password again, and use your password manager.
well that was easy
i would disable the auto fill password on her firefox >:)
Maybe setup a mozilla account and setup firefox on her phone, i'm pretty sure it would sync.
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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Chrome Password Manager is easily the most intuitive I've found. Tons of people use it without even realising it exists. Auto synced via Google account on android and you don't have to worry about it. Idk if she uses iOS what would be comparable.
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
I use vaultwarden, and I stumbled upon the generated password history. It's awesome.
Maybe try a different password manager and see if its interface is easier for her to use? There are lots of options, not all of them FOSS but this might be a time to accept a well-regarded commercial solution. Or, since she has the iPhone, try using their password solution. They integrate that pretty thoroughly in their apps and OS, and I think with this year’s OS releases across the board they have turned it into more of a fully-fledged password manager with its own apps. I know very little about it, but there might be a way to integrate it with Firefox on desktop now.