I’m trying to figure out—or maybe just grumping about—the fact that more and more of the things I have to do online now require me to set up an account and sign in to a web site, all to do this one thing, but then I have no use for the account to do anything else, and forget the password, and then have to ask it for a reminder the next time I’m forced to use that site.

For instance, requesting a vendor table and then paying for it for a science fiction convention. It used to be “complete this form and send it to us, and then send a check.” Then it was “complete this electronic form, and then give us a credit card number.” But now there are some conventions that require three separate “sign-in”s to do that: sign in to Google to complete this form telling us who you are and what you want. Then sign in to the convention web site to confirm who you are and that you really want this table. And then sign in to this other payment site to receive your bill (oh, in some cases, and then sign in to PayPal to pay for the table).

There are also several magazines that take online submissions, and require signing in to an account to do so. But since several of them use the same web site, I have no idea which ones I’ve already created, which passwords I’ve used, so I always have to say “forgot my password; let’s do it again.”

I know Google forms don’t require that sign-in (because I’ve had to complete some Google forms that didn’t require me to sign in). Now I’m wondering what I’m missing, what the conventions get from having me create all these different accounts (the passwords for which I promptly forget, because they aren’t log-ins I’ll need to use ever again, except for next year when, I go through the whole rigmarole again)? Is it another one of those “we do this because we can” things, that really doesn’t have any great benefit? Is there some great hidden benefit to having a database full of these “account” ids and passwords that no one wants or needs?