Asklemmy

so part of your room and board is tech support services? sounds fair.

Can't you setup whatever manager to autofill the 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.”

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?

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.

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".

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.

Did you set Firefox as the default iPhone password manager?

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

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?

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.

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

Send her invoice

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.

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:

• Make a “master” password with upper-case characters and digits (e.g., M45T3R). Memorize it or write it down.

• 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.