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.
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.
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.
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.
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 use vaultwarden, and I stumbled upon the generated password history. It’s awesome.
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.
Then tell her the only way to log in is via email magic login links?
Edit wait that won’t work, some services send “password reset links” that don’t log you in
This doesn’t sound like a healthy living arrangement, my friend.
I live I a place with crazy high rents and my only other option would be homelessness. Im still in training/education, and if I had to stop, id never be able to get better paying job and I’d be a wageslave the rest of my life.
Honestly we are relatively upperclass, and after some financial lessons I realize its so fucking expensive to be poor.
I hope circumstance treats you better soon, best of luck
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
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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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.
What does any of that have to do with Firefox?
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It doesn’t. Unless they’re talking about saving their passwords in Firefox, in which case it sounds like they’re not using a Mozilla account and their credentials aren’t synced.
annoying two page sign-in forms
What is up with this?
It’s a thing that makes single sign-on easier and more extensible. If you have a login email matching a server side rule, you get kicked over to a different auth provider (e.g. Okta).
Still drives me absolutely fucking bazonkers though.
Yep, that’s exactly right.
You can still just hide the password field upon typing an SSO email address — iirc Atlassian does this.
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.
honestly, with that level of carelessness or stupidity they really shouldn’t use a smartphone
Get a Pixel?
Sounds like mom can’t fuck with inputting passwords at all.
Yep. She CANNOT copy and paste. I’ve tried to teach her, long hold and tap copy, hold and tap paste, but it just doesn’t click.
Here’s to wishing Webauthn will suddenly take off.
won’t fix the problem.
won’t fix the problem.
Why not? Maybe because I’m in the Apple walled garden I’ve been spoiled, but it’s literally just scan face/finger (depending on device) and go on. It’s dead simple, and if websites would stop prompting for a username/password beforehand that would be even better.
Because webauthn does not give anything that a proper password manager couldn’t automate anyway
She wants you to be her bitch. If she could she’d make you take a shit for her.
Old people aren’t stupid. Somehow they got that old. “Can’t” nah, “won’t”.
honestly, with that level of carelessness or stupidity they really shouldn’t use a smartphone
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.”
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 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.
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.
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 >:)
