Password reset

[jack]

AGAIN I went through the steps to recover my username, reset my password, play twenty questions to discover what the actual requirements on my password are, be unable to set it, discover that the problem is "same as previous password", go back to log in screen and log in.

Is there a reason websites that have a morass of password restrictions don't show them on the LOGIN screen, so you can remember what constraints you had to deform your password to meet? Is it sheer hatred for humanity? Or just incompetence? Or better, why not accept that I don't care about your stupid insecure grasping website and give me a one-time log-in code to my actual email address, rather than forcing me to pretend that because I had to use your site once, it will automatically become my primary email address? I guess that last question answers itself.

There's a reason google is seductive and evil, "evil and repellent" is not a good sell!

Comments

[seryn]

I'm using LastPass. Which works really well in Firefox. Not at all in Opera (ffs, it's not like Opera isn't a vastly superior browser that all the other ones copied off of). And it's awkward and kludgy in Chrome.

In Firefox, I don't need to remember my master password, it works with the fingerprint scanner on my computer. Half the time when I need to get the master password, I have to open the vault in Firefox with the fingerprint reader and then show the current master password in order to be able to type it in elsewhere. Kind of terrifying.

But your point about what deformations were required is exactly the problem I used to have. It makes me crazy when there are sites with two layers of security and they have different rules. I recently had one which required me to create a password without any special chars for the outer layer and with special chars but without capital letters for the inner layer. I'm surprised they didn't require separate user names.

I also hate it when I can't get my choice of username and have to remember that because it's a site that won't let the browser store that part. WTF? Seriously? That actually is circumvented fairly well in Opera which just ignores that. (Doesn't ignore it for passwords, but will always save the username if you click the note asking.)

I did get LastPass because one of the Firefox mandatory upgrades mauled my password list. I haven't been able to login to my Yahoo mail since, except via phone. I had to reset the password when my account there was hacked. Then hacked again. Then hacked again. (and I know the hacks were leaks on Yahoo's end because I'm not using 'abcdefgh' or some manure like that.) So I'd ended up resetting my password 5 times in a week and have absolutely no clue what it is, but it's hardly worth going there and resetting it again when chances are high that it will just get hacked again. Yahoo mail has become the AOL of free email. And they know it. I got an email (which they sent to my backup email address when they noticed I hadn't logged in in a while) saying they now have a customer service phone number.

(Recently I refused to do business with a tax professional because he has an AOL email address. I'd be okay with that still working, but he should have "gone pro" by now since it's been 20 years.)

I'm not totally sold on Last Pass, but it was very easy to set up, the passwords are shared across all of my browsers. I could pay for it and have it usable on mobile devices ($12/year) but I find that I really don't need to login to very many sites via phone and the ones I do, seem to be the ones which required no deformation of password style.