India, Aug. 1 -- Mum's set-top box went on the blink last week.

She lives in Fort Kochi, and I was on a work call in Mumbai, when a cousin who lives in Bengaluru began to call persistently. He is the tech-head every elder in the family turns to when in need. How was I to know he was calling because he needed an OTP?

The OTP expired and we had to start the rather torturous process of trying, across three cities, to prove our authenticity as users and resolve the issue online.

Fixing such issues now involves an app that my 75-year-old mother cannot use on her own. Simply logging in is a challenge. The app demands an email address she did not choose, a user ID she never wrote down, and an OTP that travels all the way here, to my phone in ...