Update

10/08/12: No More Hotmail

Remember that Hotmail account I used to use for MSN Messenger that people kept e-mailing me at even though I never checked the Hotmail e-mail inbox? Well, I got locked out of it (either somebody got into it and changed my password, or I changed my password at some point and forgot it), and when I tried to reset the password the security question refused to budge against either of the possible actual answers. I sent an account recovery request to Microsoft, but frustratingly, almost all the questions it asks you about the account to verify that it's yours didn't actually apply to my Messenger-only use of it, because they involved Xbox Live accounts or custom mail folders or subjects of recent e-mails you've sent. I tried to type "Can I please talk to a human being?" into one of the recent e-mail subject fields, but the only responses I got not-so-helpfully instructed me to please fill out the form again, until the last one told me I'd made too many account recovery requests and suggested I make a new account.

Long story short, if you want to IM me, you should use my new identity, which is just my Gmail account (antialiasis@gmail.com). At least this means people will e-mail me at the right address.

(Contrast this to when I lost my Gmail account in 2007, where I sent a freeform e-mail to Google explaining my case for that being my account and got it back a few days later with no harm done. As if I weren't annoyed enough with Microsoft after this, when I signed up again with the Gmail it reminded me that Windows Live has a sixteen-character upper limit on password length, which I hope to God is merely unnecessary and not because they're actually storing plaintext passwords.)

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Comments

My own messages will be signed as Butterfree, with the Admin label below my name. If someone signs as Butterfree without that label, it's probably not me.

SlowCrow
Commenting on: 10-08-12

I know that feel. I've been locked out of my old hotmail address for several months now. Those stupid recovery questions DO NOT help.


-__________- Kaw.

[12/10/2012 20:38:01]

res
Commenting on: 10-08-12

"which I hope to God is merely unnecessary and not because they're actually storing plaintext passwords"

they could also be doing using terrible hashes by which allowing longer passwords would make it easy to produce collisions. but that's possibly even than plaintext password storage, because it implies … well, I don't think that can be attributed to even stupidity.

do wonder how many still haven't gotten the memo about storing passwords as plaintext is Wrong, though.

[12/10/2012 20:25:23]

Shadow Serenity
Commenting on: 10-08-12

You know, the exact same thing happened to me about two weeks ago, regarding the MSN hotmail thing. I still have not been able to recover the email and just ended up making a new one also, which sucks because that is/was my primary email and I lost 95% of my contacts.

[10/10/2012 06:55:28]

Page last modified November 2 2024 at 17:42 UTC