My mom is 87 years old and is pretty good with the computer. She can write emails, open attachments, attend Zoom meetings and webinars. She can get onto her medical portals and pay her bills online at the bank. Pretty good, I’d say.

For password management, however, she is strictly old school. It’s not as bad as using stickies, but it is a paper list of sites, in alphabetical order, with all of the key information – user name, password, PIN, security questions, etc. While it is an easy-to-understand system, the need to type in passwords is becoming more challenging as her vision deteriorates and her typing gets slower and more error prone. She also has been reusing some passwords (as about 65% of people admit to doing) which puts her identity at risk, as well as every site with a reused password. And two-factor authentication? Forget it.

So she has done what many people do – she lets her browser remember her passwords for the sites she visits most often. I find this to be risky as I am concerned that someone will get onto her computer and will have easy access to everything, especially the bank.

I suggested a password manager called Easeenet (pronounced “easynet”) which is supposed to be easy for seniors to use. Here are a few of the features of Easeenet that I think will be helpful to us:

Easeenet has a colorful and large print user interface with graphics to help cue recognition. The sites can be viewed in tile format or in a list format and can be organized by category. So medical sites are under one tile and shopping sites under another. You can also create your own categories.
Easeenet allows my mom to name a “Legacy Contact” (me!) so that in case she is unable to access the vaults herself, I can access the vaults either immediately or after a specified period of time. This allows her to keep their passwords confidential until the time comes when she needs me to access them.
Easeenet offers document storage and sharing, so important documents (will, power of attorney, vaccination card) and photos are securely available to both my mom and me from any device.
Easeenet provides a “Legacy Worksheet” which prompts my mom to enter key information that will be helpful in case she can’t manage her own affairs. Information such as social security number, wifi password, phone password, list of bills on autopay, etc. This information will be available to the me as the Legacy Contact, when I gain access to her Easeenet vaults.

I also learned a few things about getting a senior started with a password manager.

KEEP EXPECTATIONS REASONABLE
Don’t expect the senior to populate the password vault themselves. It can be a lot of work and you may need to help them get it done, especially if they are not very comfortable with technology. Easeenet does offer to remember passwords, most of the time, so they will be able to get their most used sites into the vault easily. The rest you may have to enter manually, although there is a feature to upload them from a spreadsheet which makes it much faster.
MAKE TIME TO RESET PASSWORDS
You may have to budget extra time to reset passwords as you help enter them into the password vault. When we started loading passwords into Easeenet, we found that at least one out of three passwords on mom’s list was outdated, and we had to reset the password before storing it.
TILES MAY BE NEW TO THEM
If the senior is moving from a paper list to Easeenet, they may not take to the tile format right away. My mom seems to prefer the list format that is available in the browser extension, and she can easily choose the site she wants from the list.
GIVE THEM TIME TO ADJUST
It will take time for them to get used to using the password manager. Mom has the sites she uses most often in Easeenet, and I only removed the passwords she saved in the browser for sensitive sites. And she still has her paper list for reference.

My mom and I are doing this in stages. I didn’t want her to become frustrated if she couldn’t access her beloved exercise site or her go-to site for animated greeting cards - jacquielawson.com! She tries to remember to use Easeenet as much as possible, and we will slowly transition all of her sites to Easeenet.

In a few months I will post an update on how she is doing with her new password manager.

My Mom’s Adventure with a Password Manager