lost password requests

[afuna]

I hate lost password requests. They leave me rather randomly heartbroken, especially when the answer is: "I'm (really) sorry, but there's nothing we can do for you."

Comments

[iruka11.livejournal.com]

ano nawala mo?

[afuna]

Nah, i'm not the one asking the question. I'm (possibly) the one answering them :)

[iruka11.livejournal.com]

ah... lj support ba? ^^;;; mahirap nga yan...

parang ganyan problema ko ngayon sa maple account ko ^^;;;

[afuna]

Aw *hugs* No progress yet on getting Ajina back? :(

[iruka11.livejournal.com]

nagreply na ung GM dun sa una kong "ticket" (that's what they call the support thing)
kelangan sagutan ung hinihingi nyang account info para maverify ung email change...
baka sa coming friday na ulit sya magreply... hehe... sana ok na un next week

[afuna]

Oh yay! But at least there's some sign of progress. Good luck to you in recovering your account

[iruka11.livejournal.com]

thanks :D

[connie]

I always think it's too bad that the people who can no longer access Hotmail or other free accounts don't think to sign up for them again, and we can't suggest it.

[afuna]

*nods*

They'll think of it if they really have to, I guess. (Rather offtopic, but eww hotmail :))

[connie]

My first email address ever was at Hotmail. :-) (So was the one I used to sign up for LJ in 2002 - I had to get it changed when I started doing Support.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

I had to get it changed when I started doing Support.

You had to? Who told you to? Or what made you?

[connie]

No one told me to at the time I did, because I think I was still new enough to Support that people weren't paying that much attention. But I know I've seen an entry somewhere in one of the Support communities (maybe support_interim) about removing insecure email accounts. Answering the lost password/email requests made me take a look at my own account, and I realized that I no longer had control of my old Hotmail address; I signed up for it again immediately, but of course that seemed somewhat sketchy in terms of account security, so I asked some people on IRC and sent in a request to get it changed. I don't know the details, but the people on IRC said that there had been Incidents in the past when Bad Things happened because Support volunteers had insecure first email addresses.

[afuna]

Hmm my first email address is a secret *paranoid*, but I used Hotmail regularly for LJ until I got Gmail. Shortly after (before?) that, something changed and you could no longer respond directly from the form in the email when in Hotmail.

I forgot if that happened before or after I switched :D

[tango.livejournal.com]

I stopped feeling sorry for them a while ago. While I think LJ should have another method of reseting a lost password, they don't and the FAQs clearly explain this. The user's decision to ignore the FAQs is not something I can fix.

[afuna]

I know, but I guess the fact that it's impossible just makes it all the more sad. (As long as they don't get belligerent, it's easy to sympathize with someone who can't get into their account because they only ever had one email validated for it.)

[pne.livejournal.com]

I hate them too.

In fact, they're part of the reason I left support; some days the number of "forgot my password and no longeer have access to the valid email account" made me so sick I couldn't bear opening the board for a couple of days.

[afuna]

*hugs* The daily grind sometimes sucks (I feel guilty in that I have a tendency to skip the more basic requests in favor of more complex ones. Though guilty isn't the proper word, either.)

I had to stop helping out in the s2flexisquares community because of all the "Help my journal doesn't work in IE" requests :/ Burned me out so much, there were days I couldn't even open my friends page because I couldn't stand to see another post from the community.

[marcelle42.livejournal.com]

They're a good gage of my mood. If I'm feeling sympathetic, I feel bad for them, because, as you said, there's nothing we can do. Especially if they're getting in trouble because of the contents of their journal, and they just want to delete it.

On the other hand, if I'm in a bad mood, I just look at them and go, "Nope, you're screwed."

[raphaelcentauri.livejournal.com]

Hee, so true, me too. :)

I've stopped answering them now, though, because my support time is a little more limited these days (despite being off I have to learn a language, learn how to teach TEFL, prepare for my fourth year, my holiday in Japan, my job applications, and do housework), so I'm trying to only work on the harder requests (which takes so much time in its own right, and still ends up with me just clicking through half of them making notes of their existence so that I can check back!).

[afuna]

Psst, I haven't told you this yet, but good luck on job applications/TEFL stuff! Sounds like you have a lot going on over there.

(And word on the harder requests. These days, I'm so distracted with trying to get ready for my trip to China, that I usually only have time to IC with my diagnostic findings, before I have to jet off again :/)

[ivles.livejournal.com]

:(

I have an account in LJ that I use my university email with, after it got deleted I have no way to get it back.

Probably should make a suggestion about 'secret questions' to get the password.

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

I think that was actually suggested some time back, although I would have to dig up the actual suggestions post to be sure of that. I was also thinking that something like what Gmail has in place, a confirmation code that is generated upon account creation, would be helpful to use in case you forget your password down the road. You would just have to hang onto that code, or you would yet again be screwed.

One big downside of that, of course, would be that even if implemented today, it would do no good for the people who have already forgotten their passwords and have no access to any of the email addresses that is currently associated or previously validated for their account.

And to Afuna, I totally agree, those requests suck because there isn't much of anything anyone can do for them. =( The only thing you can do is accept the loss and move on. Unless by some miracle, you happen to remember what your password was after all. ;) Hey, anything's possible. XD

[ivles.livejournal.com]

Probably it won't do no good for previous people, but it will for those who sign up in the future ;-) Better late than never.

Unless by some miracle, you happen to remember what your password was after all.

I would suggest the word premonition. XDD

[afuna]

Luckily, I haven't been hit by this problem yet, because it would honestly and totally suck to lose access to an account.

Hm, I'm not sure whether the confirmation code in Gmail is longterm. I don't see anything in the email that would indicate that (it seems like it might be one-time use, but again, not sure.)

[afuna]

Erk. Did you ever have any previously validated addresses on that account? If you do, you can still use that to recover your password.

[ivles.livejournal.com]

Validate yes, but recover how, it's the email address that was deleted, not the account ;-)

[afuna]

*nods* But I mean if you had another email address, not just university one, that was also validated with that old account, you could also use that to recover your password :)

Though if you only ever had the university address associated with your account, then you're out of luck :/

[lacey]

I don't answer those, they make me sad too.

[afuna]

*hugs Lacey*

[lacey]

*hugs Afuna*