Am I going mad or is there something seriously wrong with our entire system? My son just opened an account in one of our large private banks. First we recieved a letter giving us an account number and a customer id number which, the letter said, is very important and must be kept secret. Inside there was a sealed paper which has the pin number for the ATM card. The instruction says that once the sealed envelope is opened the four digit number printed inside must be memorised and the envelop destroyed. A few days later we received another envelope containing a cheque book, an ATM card and two more sealed envelopes containing secret numbers to be memorised for phone banking and net banking. Five numbers just for one account. To take advantage of varying interest rates and investment opportunities one may open three or four such accounts which would mean remembering fifteen to twenty numbers. Then there is the mandatory PAN or Permanent Account Number for filing income tax returns, a passport number, driving licence number, numbers on your car number plates, your telephone number and perhaps telephone numbers of spouse and children. Some of these such as telephone numbers have ten to twelve digits. Only some one like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man could possibly remember so many ridiculous numbers. So either we genetically engineer brilliant but autistic people or the scientists have to come up with an encrypted system based on biometrics which would entail remembering just one number and would be impossible to hack into. We could be talking about the first trillionaire of the world.