Your password has been successfully changed.
I wonder in passing what an unsuccessfully changed password would look like, but I keep reading.
If you did not make this change . . .
Guys. How could a change I did not make be described as “successful” in any way? I keep reading.
If you did not make this change
or believe your account has been accessed
by an unauthorized person,
please contact . . .
Oh oh. I’m not clear on how these options differ:
- Option 1 – My password has been changed. I did not make this change and so I believe (or will, as soon as I think about it) that an unauthorized person has accessed my account.
- Option 2 – My password has been changed. I believe my account has been accessed by an unauthorized person only and precisely because I know that I did not make this change.
Sigh. I’ve stopped reading and started writing.
Someone just changed your password.
Was it you?
Great! All good.
Was it someone you authorized?
Great! All good.
In all other cases,
contact us right now.
For my money, though (and it is my money we’re talking about here), that’s still too complicated.
Someone just changed your password.
If it wasn’t you, then contact us right now.
No fuss, no muss, no someone-you-authorized. The good news is that many sites manage to get here.
As I migrate to a password manager, I’m having ample opportunity to observe how different sites manage this critical security communication about a password change. Some get it right; some not so much. For the not-so-muches I’m tempted to hit Reply.
Someone just sent me
a complicated
and badly thought-through
email about my account security!!!It was you.
(OK, OK, or someone you authorized.)Cut. It. Out.
I won’t, of course, because (unlike me) they aren’t reading what they wrote.
And all such insanities are being magnified with AI. AI stands for Awful Input, as in too much, not screened, lacking in values, and banal.
We are losing a battle, but not a war. Take courage!
Laurna – Yeah, it would be nice to have a way to flag good/bad emails at source so the LLM could discard the poor ones.
Katherine Argent
@effthealgorithm on the bird one
What life on the internet feels like.
Online] search is full of ads and wrong answers.
Every other email is an ad.
Prime Video charges you and shows ads.
Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu?
Ads followed by more ads.
Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad.
Pinterest is nothing but ads.
AI is in everything.
AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop.
AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads.
Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept.
You need an account to do that.
Change your temporary password.
Enter your 2FA code.
Check your email and enter that code.
Now use a passkey.
Your password is too simple to remember.
Change it.
No, not like that.
Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code…
Welcome back!
We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none).
Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix.
Subscribe to toilet paper.
Subscribe to these groceries.
Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to.
Time to work?
We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update.
But first, click here to agree.
Update installed — your laptop’s broken now.
It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI.
Go to your phone to complain on social media.
Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI.
Click here.
Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update.
Now it’s useless.
Go get the newest phone.
Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago
but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud.
It’s their GoFundMe.
Their MLM.
Their Patreon.
Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends.
They blocked you.
Make new friends.
Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along.
You need an account to use this app.
That username is taken.
Enter a password.
Not that one, you used it on another site.
You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app.
Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network.
Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details.
Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web.
There’s a class action suit.
You can join.
It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement.
We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details.
Oh no, another hack.
That info is circulating now, too.
Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text.
Why are you angry?
Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone?
Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier?
Do you know how ridiculous that [you] sounds?
This is progress.
You’ll be left behind.
Do you want to be left behind? Do you?
…every single day.”
Barbara – 🙂
Too true. I’ve seen every one of those annoying interruptions to what I am trying to accomplish by communicating online. It’s not surprising that people are trending away from websites. From what I read on Medium by people who seem to understand AI, the entire scheme is towards dictatorship by a handful of technocrats and may collapse before it completely destroys electrical grids and water supplies
Laurna – I despair of democracy sometimes but then I think of Churchill’s quip that it was the worst form of government except for all the others that had been tried. The thought of a technocratic dictatorship or oligarchy fills me with dread.
Reminds me too much of my blog woes!
The site is the target of scraping activity, which is a term that I now at least understand. Unfortunately. Thank goodness I have retired from IT management!
Judith – Oh dear. Good luck!
Isabel
Talk about circular logic!
Tom
Tom – And light on the logic, heavy on the circular!