darkoshi: (Default)
Do most people really have lists of "favorite" things, which they can easily remember? So many "security" questions that websites let you choose from are of the sort which ask what your favorite book/movie/thing to eat/holiday/teacher/etc is.

I don't have many easily remembered favorite things, so that greatly cuts down on the questions I can select (assuming that I give true answers to the questions).

When I was a kid, I did have a favorite book, a favorite movie, and various other favorite things. As a kid, you often are asked what your favorite things are, so you think about it, and decide on answers. But as I got older, I slowly lost interest in my old favorites, and I came across various new books and movies that I enjoyed. It was harder to choose favorites. The older you get, the more things you experience... is it normal to always peg certain experiences as favorites? If I think long enough, I can come up with various books and movies I've enjoyed, but I don't categorize them in my mind as favorites. I don't even have a favorite author anymore.

Is this related to dysthymia (not experiencing much enjoyment in things), or a normal side-effect of aging (having experienced too many things, to bother choosing and remembering favorites)?

On a similar vein, I recently had a problem logging into an account. I had to answer the security question "Where did you spend your honeymoon?". Never having been married, it dumbfounded me. I tried entering various answers that I might have originally given, like "nowhere", "I didn't", etc., but none worked. I finally regained access to the account by another route, and promptly changed the security questions.

Yahoo weirdness

Monday, October 8th, 2012 10:59 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Forestfen had difficulty logging into her Yahoo Mail account today. She was being prompted to perform an extra sign-in verification step (aka 2-factor authentication). It wasn't simply a prompt advising her to set up 2-factor authentication as I sometimes get; it was actually prompting her to enter a phone number for the security code to be sent to. There was no way of bypassing it.

To Forestfen's knowledge, she hadn't previously turned on 2-factor authentication, nor had she previously entered her phone number on any Yahoo Options page.

This was corroborated by the fact that the extra sign-in verification window had an entry field for her to enter her phone number in. That was the really odd thing about it (though that didn't occur to me until later). Anyone could have entered any phone number, and have been sent a code for logging in.

I tried logging into her email account from a completely different computer, and got the same prompt as she was getting. This at least assured me that the problem wasn't due to malware on her computer.

The prompt had 2 fields, a "Country" drop-down and a "Phone Number" entry field. There were 2 push-buttons - one to receive a phone call, and the other to receive a SMS message. Forestfen first tried the phone call option (she said she got an automated call with a 3-digit number), and then the SMS option (which sent a 5-digit number), and finally got logged in.

The Yahoo Account info page shows "second sign-in verification" is flagged as being in "beta".
I suppose this must be some bug in their logic.

silly security

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012 03:31 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Apparently, BestBuy.com doesn't let you include special characters in your account password. I tried 4 different passwords, all of which followed the stated guidelines (6 to 30 characters, must include at least 1 number), and yet were rejected. Then I tried one without any special characters, and it was accepted.

June 2013

S M T W T F S
      1
234 5678
91011 12131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30      

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags