About the only real problem I have with a password protected account is with the couple of sites where my former employer insists I should get all my information about my retirement account and my insurance.

They insist that you should must your "real name" as the username, but apparently there are a whole lot of people in their system with the same username they insist I use, so there are lots of "accidental attempts" to log in on my accounts. In the case of duplicate usernames, they apparently try to match up the account based on the password their automated system thinks you try to use(?).

As a security feature, they impose a "three strikes and out" rule, meaning that three failed attempts to log into an account locks the account until you get them to reset a new (random) password for you.

When I tried using their system, I was able to log in successfully twice, in about the first 15 attempts (I've got a list - dates and times of attempts - somewhere).

Getting a new password successfully applied required a minimum of four attempts the half dozen times it actually worked at all.

Neither the new password they assigned, nor the password that I reset immediately after getting a their reset, ever worked twice.

They get really pi**ed when I telephone, put the speaker on, and do something useful for the 20 to 50 minutes it takes for them to run out of recorded messages and put a person on, but it just isn't worth my attention to try to use their "web system."

I made one login attempt about 14 years ago to make sure the account was securely "locked" and haven't been back. Fortunately the need to communicate with them is very rare, and I'm learning to understand swahili and urdu accents fairly well from talking to their "real person agents," although a couple of times I've had to hang up and call back when I got one who was completely unintelligible. ("I've got a really bad connection. Let me hang up and try again.")

John