Is Sharing Passwords The New Sign Of Commitment?

They say that when you're serious about getting serious, you have to share everything with your partner. But what about your passwords? Does your partner have the right to access your e-mail inbox? How about your Facebook account? Or your online bank statements?

According to a recent article in the New York Times, that's exactly what many young couples are now doing. In yet another example of how technology has changed the way we date and relate, gifting a letterman jacket or exchanging class rings is no longer the most coveted sign of devotion for loved up young people. Now it's fashionable to share passwords to online accounts, or to create identical passwords that allow each other access to e-mails, texts, Facebook messages, and a host of other formerly-private online information.

Though it's intended to be a romantic gesture, the risks are clear. "The stories of fallout," writes Matt Richtel, "include a spurned boyfriend in junior high who tries to humiliate his ex-girlfriend by spreading her e-mail secrets" and "tensions between significant others over scouring each other's private messages for clues of disloyalty or infidelity." Changing a password is easy, but erasing the damage that can be done to relationship and reputation before the password is changed is a much bigger task.

Gizmodo writer Sam Biddle has called password sharing "a linchpin of intimacy in the 21st century." "I've known plenty of couples who have shared passwords, and not a single one has not regretted it," he said in an interview, before adding that swapping passwords contains the implicit agreement that mutually assured destruction is the consequence if someone misbehaves.

It might sounds like something that only more inexperienced daters would fall for, but plenty of "older and wiser" daters are getting swept up in the falsely romantic notion that sharing your life with someone means sharing everything with someone. The fad may have started with teenagers, but it's continuing with adults.

Biddle's advice for navigating the new trend for password sharing is clear: don't do it. "The inbox is one of the few sacred places left online," he writes, "the only space on your monitor not shared into oblivion. This isn't about having something to hide-it's about keeping meaningful boundaries in an era when there are verrrrry few. We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that." Facebook, AIM, your smartphone, your laptop...every password should be kept private, or revealed only after very serious consideration.

But there's one exception: Netflix. "If you're embarrassed by your taste in movies and TV," Biddle says, "your relationship is screwed anyway. Just make sure it's a different password from everything else."

Have you ever shared a password with a partner? Was the experience good or bad? Would you do it again?