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I always find the various authentication experiences to be more annoying than reassuring, but until now I've always managed to defeat whatever bizarre scheme a web site has created.
Yes, I'm fan of "Reset Password."
Microsoft though has stopped me dead by refusing me access to an outlook.com [account] even though I have the email address and password.
About three years ago someone established an outlook.com email for an organization. They passed the login info on to me. I subsequently just accessed it via Gmail for the next two years.
Today I tried to log in to outlook.com make some changes. They apparently feel that I am not who I say I am and demand some kind of "authentication."
After a half an hour of repeatedly submitting "Verification Forms" (Names, Birthdate, City, Postal Code, Captchas, Previous passwords....," entering numerous PINs, and generally jumping through hoops, I have concluded that I will never ever access this account again.
Best of all the email quoted below offers no way that I can appeal this to some kind of living being.
Is this the worst authentication disaster ever? Is there any logical reason why you would make it impossible for your customers to ever recover an account?
[Continues...]
We recently received a request to recover your Microsoft account *****@outlook.com. Unfortunately, our automated system has determined that the information you provided was not sufficient for us to validate your account ownership. Microsoft takes the security and privacy of our customers very seriously, and our commitment to protecting your personal information requires that we take the utmost care in ensuring that you are the account owner.
Please submit a new account verification form
At this point, your best option is to submit a new form with as much accurate information as you can gather. The more information you can include in the form, the better the chance you'll have of regaining access to your account. We've included a few tips below to help you fill out the form as completely and accurately as possible.
> Submit a new form
Helpful tips for filling out another form:
Answer as many questions as you can.
Use the information you provided when you created the account, or last updated it.
Submit the form from a computer you frequently use.
You will be asked to list recently used email addresses and the subject lines from recent emails. Ask for help from family members, friends, or business contacts to confirm their email addresses and tell you the subject lines of the last three emails they sent you.
Make sure to use the correct domain for your account, such as hotmail.com, live.com, or outlook.com. Keep in mind that your email address may be country specific. For example, if you created your account in Sweden, your domain would be "hotmail.co.se" rather than "hotmail.com".Ready?
> Submit a new form
Thank you,
Microsoft Support TeamMicrosoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday September 25 2016, @03:51PM
What should people do for email, if not Google, Yahoo, or Hotmail? If you run your own email server, you still need an email address, and that's a pain, to say nothing of dealing with dynamic IP addresses. Don't want my contacts having their emails to me bounced because they arrived in between an IP address change and the updating of the DNS. Too often, I've had DNS services change terms on me. Not that email providers don't do the same. Used to use dyndns. Lot of routers had autorenewal capabilty for dyndns and a few others baked in. Also have to deal with spam yourself.
Maybe the post office or other appropriate government organization could be created or brought into this, give some stability to email addresses. Why can't I be JohnSmith1042@citizen.us now, and 50 or 100 years from now?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Max Hyre on Sunday September 25 2016, @11:18PM
For me, the best part is my account is the catch-all for the domain, so I can give out a different e-mail address for every contact (other than friends and family :-), with said contact's name it it, so I know who's behind every incoming e-mail. It also clues me in when an organization's sold me out or been hacked—I start getting unrelated mails sent to that correspondent's address.
Of course, I've always wanted to set up my own e-mail server (like Hillary?). Maybe someday.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday September 26 2016, @01:16AM
Same here - my email address used to be tied to my ISP, but I had to ditch that when I got sick of their crap.
I shelled out for a domain name and hosting service and have never looked back. Not only do I get to fully control my own email accounts, I can set up and maintain as many as I like. It also comes with web hosting and personal storage too, though that's a lot less useful since the advent of DropBox etc.