If you’ve been living life on the Internet, which is normal (and expected because you’re reading this online), then it’s entirely possible that you’ve enjoying yourself, purchased something, contributed digital scrawl, and otherwise wasted time without ever having to use a Windows Live ID.

Normally — and I write the word “normally” without any regard to Microsoft’s definition of the term — you use a logon name and password to access secure information on the Internet.

For example, you go shopping at Amazon, you input a name and password. Simple. Ditto for Facebook. Double ditto for any other site you log into and use. But not so simple or sensible for any site that Microsoft runs.

Nope, Microsoft requires that you have a universal ID, which is presently called the Windows Live ID.

The Windows Live ID is the most recent, obnoxious and odious step in an evolution of universal IDs pushed by Microsoft. Originally, it was known as the Microsoft Wallet and then Microsoft Passport and next the .NET Passport and finally, albeit mercifully briefly, the Microsoft Passport Network.

You know a technology is really hitting it with the public when its name gets changed more often than the dollar menu at McDonalds.

Regardless of the name, the notion was to create a universal logon, so that you had to type only one name and one password to get access to everything everywhere on the Internet. A noble notion, but wrong.

It’s wrong because once someone figures out your universal password, then they have unfettered access to your online shopping accounts (i.e., credit cards), online banking, online stock brokering, online everything.

I’m certain that the Microsoft employee who pointed out the horrid potentials of a universal password was immediately terminated and shot by his superior.

Still, Microsoft isn’t a company to let an offensive idea die.

It’s necessary to get a Windows Live ID to access any of a number of places in Microsoft’s digital realm. The big issue I have with it is that I only use my Windows Live ID when Microsoft utterly insists upon using it. Because I don’t otherwise use the thing, and because it must use a Microsoft email account I don’t need, I generally forget my Windows Live ID. I let it lapse.

When your Windows Live ID lapses, you simple get another one. My problem now is that I have half a dozen Windows Live IDs and, because I don’t normally use them, I have no idea what they are or what the passwords are. And it’s simpler to get another Windows Live ID than to suffer through the password recovery ordeal.

Why doesn’t Microsoft just succumb to the same logic as every other entity on the Internet: Let me choose my own logon name and password. Then just manage the accounts. Would that make sense? Or would someone get fired for even suggesting as much?