THE PATRIOT KID
REPLY ON GOOGLE AND I DON'T
KNOW WHO. WE ALL USE THE
SAME LOGIN.
ONE LOGIN MEANS NO NAMES
ON ANYTHING — THAT'S THE
REAL COST, NOT THE SECURITY.
✗ Everyone who ever worked here can still get in
✗ Changing it locks out five people at once
✗ So nobody ever changes it
✗ Two-factor goes to somebody's phone
1. Email and phone — forward, don't delete
2. Google Business Profile
3. Facebook / Instagram
4. The website and hosting
5. Card readers and payments
6. The building alarm and the keys
It takes an hour once. Then twenty minutes, forever.
✓ Google, Facebook and Microsoft all do this free
✓ A password manager for what can't be split
✓ Two-factor on the owner's phone, not a shared one
✓ Remove people the day they go, not the month
FROM MY PHONE AND FORGOT.
AT LEAST NOW IT SAYS SO.
somebody — being able to
answer the question at all.
👤 It's About Names, Not Hackers
Shared logins get talked about as a security problem, and they are — but that's rarely what actually bites a small business. What bites is that nothing has a name on it.
A price gets changed and nobody knows by whom. A review gets a reply that shouldn't have been sent. An order is marked complete and it wasn't. With one login there is no answer to "who did this", so the conversation becomes about trust instead of about a mistake — which is a far worse conversation to have with someone who works for you.
Separate accounts don't stop mistakes. They stop mistakes turning into accusations.
🌐 Most Of This Is Free
The main platforms already support one account per person, and people share logins because nobody ever set it up rather than because it costs money:
- Google Business Profile — add managers by their own Google account. Free, and removing one takes seconds.
- Facebook and Instagram — Business Manager gives each person their own access. Nobody needs the owner's personal password.
- Microsoft 365 — a licence per person, but that's what you're already paying for.
- Your website — almost every system supports more than one user.
Where something genuinely only has one login — a card reader portal, an old supplier account — put it in a password manager and share it from there, so revoking access doesn't mean telling four people a new password.
🚪 The Leaver's List
Write it once, while nobody is leaving. It's the single most useful IT document a small business owns, and it takes about an hour: every system, who administers it, how access is removed.
Then when somebody does go — on good terms or bad — it's twenty minutes of ticking rather than a fortnight of remembering. Forward their email rather than deleting it. Deleting a mailbox loses the customer conversations in it, and customers keep replying to the address of somebody who left long after they've gone.
The one people forget: two-factor codes going to a phone number that has left the building.
Not sure who has access to what? Chuck will go through it with you — that's usually a one-visit job.
Got an IT problem worthy of a comic? Tell Chuck about it.