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.
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.
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!
She doesn’t have money dude, nobody like this does. You have no way of knowing if she had more debt than assets.
Just use Chrome everywhere, and sync it to Google. There should be chrome for iPhone.
That’s not true. The wealthiest people in the world are abusive as fuck. Is it possible she’s swimming in mountains of debt that outweigh her value? It’s entirely possible. But it certainly isn’t a guarantee
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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?
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
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’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
doesn’t need to remember the master password if you set up an unlock PIN. Actually I think maybe it’s a bad idea to let them remember the master password, because they may just type it in everywhere expecting it to work…
I forgot about the pin. Mine almost never asks me for mine, it always wants the master password when auto filling, but that’s likely bc of something in my settings.
the pin is a per-device thing, you need to set it up first to use it
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.
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.
I dont feel like government forms and taxes are any more intuitive.
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 documents that you need. Every time we would start over this way. None of these abstracted concepts that are supposed to make logical sense, the very foundation of Windows’s success with casual users, ever stuck with them.
They would eventually 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 information 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
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.
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 that 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.
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 afford 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.
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I’d call it reaping what you sow.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can’t you setup whatever manager to autofill the password?
Not every website is set up properly to allow that to work seamlessly.
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
