X Æ A-12 after finding out he was named after his dads password
I honestly feel lucky to have a good memory for that sort of thing because I have a whole index of high quality passwords inside my head that have never been leaked on the internet. I use these for password vaults/TOTP vaults in which all my passwords are randomly generated strings of nonsense.
I am simultaneously annoyed by and feel sorry for people who can’t even remember a simple password that they use everywhere for everything. Helping other people break back into their own accounts simply because they’ve forgotten the password is tediously frustrating because it sucks to do and because it sucks for them to be locked out and all you want to do is help but they’re so little help in helping you achieve it.
Helping other people break back into their own accounts simply because they’ve forgotten the password is tediously frustrating
I’ve done it enough to start getting good at it.
At this point I’m kind of scared of how easy it is.
I’m at a point where if someone says they don’t remember a password, my next question is “can I see your phone for a second” and as long as they hand it to me unlocked I’ll be in the account in about two minutes.
Helped a staff member where I work with this, was not fun.
- She speaks very little English
- Phone is set to display everything in Spanish
- She’s also very old, so phone is set to display everything in 72pt font
- Does not remember her password for ANYTHING, not even one we set together and wrote down to keep in her purse
- Personal email is Hotmail
- Recovery email on the Hotmail account belonged to her husband who died a decade ago
- Recovery phone number on the Hotmail account is her old phone number, no one has access to it
- Hotmail account recovery wants me to provide the subject line and send dates from three emails… There is zero chance of this
Went back and forth with Microsoft for days before we got her back in.
That’s easy enough for people who actually have things set up in a reasonable way. My mother has an iPhone but all her services are Google and she often can’t even get into her fucking phone because she can’t find it. So when she can’t find her phone and can’t remember her Apple password so we can’t log into iCloud to do Find Your Phone, and she can’t remember her Google password so we can get into her email so we can reset the Apple password it’s kind of a clusterfuck.
Well yeah without an active session into something it gets tricky.
I just shamelessly start saving their credentials into my bitwarden.
My relatives that I was able to train into using it, have their passwords shared with me via organizations. And I’m set up as their vault recovery.
I also have “parental” access to the location of my grandmas tablet and phone. Which also doubles as a way to see if she’s turned on airplane mode and isn’t getting our calls and messages.
It’s even worse when you used to be the password.
