Under the wire: Blanket security

My parents have signed up for DSL. This may not seem like a major, interesting talking point to you, but that’s because you don’t know my parents. If you knew my parents, you’d wonder why the news is not on the front page of this august journal.

My parents are luddites from a long tradition of luddites. They would still be renting VHS movies on a Friday night if I hadn’t bought them a DVD player. They resisted compact discs until a particular recording turned out not to be available on vinyl anymore.

Heck, my father still has a manual typewriter in his office. Of course, when the fossil fuel runs out and the rest of us have no electricity, he’ll be the one laughing.

Anyway, in addition to the old Smith-Corona, my father has a computer. Not the world’s newest or fastest, but he says he likes the ‘think time’ it affords him. It’s certainly fast enough for email and web surfing, which he discovered a couple of years ago and took to like a duck to somewhat choppy water.

At some recent point in history, though, his ISP contacted him and persuaded him that he could get a DSL connection and actually pay less than he was then paying for his dial-up access. A convincing argument, even if he didn’t have that much of a clue what was involved.

Of course, he does not need to have that much of a clue what’s involved, because he has me. So it was that I found myself over at my parents’ house one night setting up their DSL connection. My father was out at the time – I thought I’d get it done before he got home.

I got to the point where a password was required. The letter from the ISP said the password ‘had been provided’, so I phoned my father to ask what it was (a mobile phone is another recent concession to modernity). He had no idea.

So it looked like a wasted trip. If he didn’t know the password, the only way to get it would be to call the ISP and ask them, and of course he would be the only one who could do that, right? Right. Or ...

Worth a try, isn’t it? Not believing for a moment I’d get anywhere, I phoned the ISP and gave them my father’s username. I didn’t pretend I was him – I told the tech support guy who I was and what I was trying to do, and could they just tell me what the password is.

‘It’s the same one he uses for his POP3 email,’ he said. ‘Oh, so it’s [insert password here]?’ I said.‘That’s the one,’ he said.

I knew the email password because (this will not surprise you) I set up his email account to start off with. What might (should) surprise you is that, aside from giving the username and explaining who I was, I’d not been asked for any identifying information. I could have been anybody.

The hilarious part came later, when it became obvious that the DSL account had been set up incorrectly by the ISP and my father wanted to get it fixed. When he phoned up, he was asked his username, then his address and phone number, date of birth, driver’s licence number and his mother’s maiden name. Had the technology existed I’m sure they’d have sought a retinal scan and perhaps a DNA sample.

Clearly I am part of the Brotherhood Of Guys Who Sound Like They Know What They’re Doing, and my father is not. When a member of the Brotherhood phones tech support, he is readily given the information he seeks. When a non-member deigns to disturb the oracle, steps are taken to protect the ancient secrets.

Which is a good thing. After all, if everyone knew how computers worked, I’d be out of a job.

Matthew JC Powell even knows the secret handshake. He won’t divulge it on mjcp@optusnet.com.au.