‘Forgot password’ resets cost VW €1 million a year

Passwords can be tricky things to remember and sometimes writing them down to keep somewhere safe can even prove too difficult for some people.

But such a simple lapse in memory is costing Volkswagen's headquarters in Wolfsburg around €1 million every year in IT services.

Apparently employees prefer to call up an outsourced IT firm that charges a fee when they're locked out of their workstation, rather than using the company's in-house service for free.

Around 70,000 employees received a company email recently, obtained by DPA, that warned of the high cost.

It also advised workers that in the future if they should lose their precious passwords, to use a computer program to fix the problem, rather than calling up the outside company.

Volkswagen has had an in-house IT provider since 2014, according to Wolfsburger Nachrichten. The service allows employees to simply use their company ID to request a new password.