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[martinuzz]

I deleted all my cookies in an attempt to fix gmail, that has been throwing me a OOPS #001 for about 6 weeks now.
Was too lazy to search for the bay12 password and tried recovery by email.

It says it sent an email, but I never got it. Tried another time, same.
So yeah I had to go search for my old password.

Just posting for a heads up: password recovery doesn't send emails.

[StrawBarrel]

That does sound troublesome. Hopefully there are possible ways to fix this issue.

[Starver]

I vaguely remember an issue of new account autoconfirm not working properly, a year or three ago (but, even more vaguely, also that it was then fixed), which might be related.

There is a friendly Toad who can (in extremis) fix particular cases manually and individually, of course. From experience, though it may have helped that I was not troubled by a widespread issue but just my own (and thus all the effort I put in to verify that I was really me could be considered without getting pleas from all over the place, swamping him).


But, as I always like to say (but don't always personally prepare for!), there's two sides to computer security. One is preventing those who shouldn't have access from getting access. The other is ensuring that those who should have access retain (or, when lost, quickly regain) access. These apply as much to how you handle your own logins, as much as the like of the B12 server handles that side's set of safes-and-safety-nets.

(I probably need to take this as a cue to go to my chosen "fallback" store of important things and see if it needs updating. But I won't say what form this takes as: 1) It's a possibly misguided and unnecessary attempt at "security through obscurity", an awful practise to rely upon; 2) I'd never presume that what works for me would work for anyone else. Just to say that there was an era when I kept active passwords and account details (mixed up and buried in decoy rubbish, in a way only I knew) on a handy scrap of innocuous paper, with the eventual problem of it becoming too scrappy and illegible before I got around to properly making a new 'innocuous scrap'. So I stopped doing that.)

[martinuzz]

I never use the same password anyway, and have them all scribbled on a physical notepad. It's a lot to browse through though, hence my lazy attempt.

[Starver]

I never use the same password anyway, and have them all scribbled on a physical notepad. It's a lot to browse through though, hence my lazy attempt.

I neither have the same passwords (or at least not trivially so, I may thematically repeat across vastly different presences) nor usernames (I'm only Starver here, not anywhere else on or any other service; the only exception being a handful of "real name" examples for obvious reasons).

I've seen too much of admin passwords written on post-it notes in open-plan offices to be so obvious myself. (And that time I accidentally got a copy of someone's range of logins in a computer file, once; long story, but trust me in that I didn't go into anything, from general webmail to paypal to... well, it was sort of an early OnlyFans type of site, shall we say. And in context was clearly a publishing account, not just a login as a 'fan'. Definitely could have fallen into less conscientious hands.) But I really mean just to say that everyone has to make their own (informed) decisions.

In particular, if everyone left their emergency list of logins inbetween pages 42 and 43 of The Big Book Of Fairy Stories then any visitor/intruder would know where to opportunistically sneak a look. So the least I try to push any particular solution the better...

(Though I really ought to have a sealed and safe list of "in the unfortunate event..." places, ids and means to access them that I can have someone properly close off my affairs when I no longer can. And anyone who does that should also make sure that it will get into the hands of an intended recipient.)

Sorry, have rather detoured this thread. But I have a professional interest in trying to get people to think carefully about these things, and it's hard not to take such a cue.

[martinuzz]

Agh no worries. Those trying to sneak their way to my scribbled notes will learn to respect their remaining fingers