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The first step to recovery from any counterproductive behavior is to admit you have a problem. The bad news is that I have a problem in the area of username/password management. The good news is that my problem is not my fault. The problem is a result of just the way things are.

In my house (can’t tell you where), I have two lists of usernames/passwords for the various accounts that have crept into my life in the last ten years. The first list is somewhat long in the tooth, and is four printed pages. I don’t know why I keep that list around, but I do. It even has a number of yellow stickies on it with account information that found its way onto one. The second list contains account information that is more recent. Printed, this list is five pages long. So I have nine printed pages of account information output. Nine pages. Of course, the recent list is encrypted. Heaven help me if I misplace or forget the passphrase.

Unfortunately, account information proliferation shows few signs of improving soon. Microsoft’s Passport and Sun’s Liberty Alliance (remember these gems from way back?) were supposed to solve this problem, but for various reasons never did.

As for contemporary solutions, it looks like OpenID is gaining notoriety, but I don’t see it on sites that I visit with great regularity: Google’s gmail and Amazon come to mind. Come to think of it, I have never seen an OpenID-supported web site in all my travels. And I like to think I get around. Unfortunately, I don’t think we know much about security exploits against systems like OpenID for the simple fact that the world has no widespread experience with them.

Something’s gotta give in this space. I know I am not the only one keeping passwords in flat files, and mine cannot be the only list that is showing signs of unbounded growth. But specifically what to do about I do not know. But I know I have a problem.