"Two factor authentication" and

"passwords" and "keys" and "your date of birth" and "your address" and.... and so it goes on.

Just recently someone I know was out and about. He had left his mobile phone home. Help! No way to contact anyone. There wasn't a phone box in sight. He stopped me, made a quick call to his wife (who answered the phone only because my name comes up) and, long suffering woman she is, she got in her car and brought his phone to him.

Once of course there would have been no way of doing this at all. Other things simply would not have happened.

I remember my grandfather and the Senior Cat having to send their signatures (via the bank) interstate and overseas in order to be able to access money. Now you can access money via your phone. 

In order for this to be "secure" - or so they tell us - you now need to go through seemingly endless amounts of "verification".  We are told that this is necessary for our own safety. Perhaps it is.

But then other problems arise. Middle Cat tried to call for a taxi recently. It is not something she has ever needed to do since mobile phones came into being. In the end she simply gave up. She went back into the medical clinic and got them to call a taxi for the elderly woman who needed one.  They taxi company couldn't handle a request for a taxi to be sent to a big medical clinic on a major road into the city. They needed something which could be not only be "plugged into the GPS but also 'verified' as coming from..Middle Cat". 

This might help to prevent "prank" calls but it is also dangerous if there is an emergency. Someone else I know had occasion to call the emergency number recently. He had witnessed an elderly man fall off his mobility scooter and injure himself. The boy who had seen this did the right thing but, being and sounding young, the operator apparently gave him a hard time before sending an ambulance. The boy did the right thing. He told the operator, "If you don't believe me then call my mum." (As you don't need a licence for a mobility scooter the boy took the mobility scooter back to where the old man lives and even plugged it in to recharge. There are some really sensible teenagers in this world.) It worried his parents that a responsible teen who was handling a situation very sensibly was being questioned this way. 

I am not sure where all this is going but the boy in question later said to me, "We are going to end up where we have to have passwords to talk to everyone...and don't forget the two factor authentication."

It's a frightening thought.