Why passwords are so hated

Mali is not a rich country. The eleven million people get by on an average annual individual income of about $850 (CIA figures).

It's not hugely technical either. There are about 23,000 phone lines in the country and less than 3,000 mobile phones. There is only one ISP and it claims to have about 10,000 customers.

Mali has just finished voting in its Presidential election - camels were used to deliver and collect ballot boxes to the remote desert region north of Timbuktu.

The camels did their work and the ballot boxes were safely delivered to the capital Bamako. As the count started the results were fed into a basic computer system.

And that's where the problems started.

The IT manager in charge was in a serious car accident on Sunday. The computer system was password protected. And no-one else knows the password. Sound familiar?

Without the password they cannot access the votes already counted.

Passwords are the bane of IT departments and users alike - the world over.

In the summer, helpdesk staff do little else but reset passwords for people returning from holiday who can't remember them.

Overall, password queries can account for up to 50 per cent of all calls to an organisation's helpdesk.

We all need dozens of passwords and PIN numbers and we are supposed to use different combinations of numbers and words for all of them. And, of course, we shouldn't write them down.

In reality this is impossible. And it's a problem the IT industry has failed to address.

Microsoft is researching people's ability to recognise and remember faces. Users are given a selection of faces and must click on their chosen 'passface'*. No words or numbers to remember and nothing you can write down.

It might not be as secure as a twenty-character password but it does sound useable. Until then we'll all have to keep hold of that Post-It note with all the passwords scrawled on it

* Passface is a registered trademark of Realuser.com