account | Piss and Moan

Follow up – Authentication frustration

Posted on July 16, 2021 by backuphill

Alright, for those of you who give a rat’s ass and want to know what’s going on over here at the blog, I have a follow up about the last post – Authentication frustration. I doubt that many of you really care whether you get an update but just in case you are interested or simply run into the issue yourself, here is the info you might need.

Two-factor authentication is a royal pain in the ass. It is unfortunate that it is even needed, but that is the state of society these days. There’s a whole bunch of really stupid, bad people out there.

While Instagram and Facebook have the ability to set up two factor authentication, I would recommend NOT using it and just having a really, really strong password. The unfortunate truth is that this social media giant has a process that is broken, meaning you may or may not be able to access your account if you ever need to use it. Based on scouring the internet, I would say there are a large number of people who have lost their accounts due to the fact that the text message for the two factor authenticator never gets generated or sent (not sure which, but either way nothing shows up in your messages). Thus, leaving people stuck and locked out of their accounts.

I’ll tell you what, it was a couple of frustrating and worrisome days trying to get back into my accounts.

Yes, you read that right. I WAS able to get back into both of my Instagram accounts. But it wasn’t without a lot of hassle and frustration.

The “help” documentation provided by Instagram is annoying, poorly written, and ultimately doesn’t really help. There is no clear way to contact customer support if none of their suggestions work. It is just a mind numbing maze of FAQs that don’t really point you in a clear direction if you ultimately still need assistance. It would have been especially helpful if along with the “How to set up two factor authentication” FAQ there was also a FAQ for “What do I do if two factor authentication isn’t working as it should?” A “click here” link to fill out a support ticket would have been just awesome.

As it turns out, I somehow stumbled upon a place to submit a “help ticket” in the app and eventually got a response via email. The place I filled out the form said I would receive an email from Instagram. Low and behold, I got a rather suspicious looking email from Facebook. This email was signed by “The Instagram Team” and outlined steps to begin the recovery process. Luckily, I had seen and read a blog post by someone else that outlined the process they went through to recover their account. The email they described sounded very similar to the one I received so I wasn’t as suspicious as I would normally be.

“Please reply to the message and attach a photo of yourself holding a hand-written copy of the code below: XXXXXXXXX”

Then followed other instructions about how to submit the photo. I followed the instructions and replied to the email. About 30 minutes later I got another response with more steps to take for account verification. I followed those steps and then another email arrived. Within two hours I was back into my account and turned off two factor authentication.

What a freaking hassle!

Anyway, after all is said and done, the world has been set right again. I know you might not be all that keen on dealing with social media and whatnot, but truth be told – those that use it have memories stored there and have distant family access there. In the case of one account, I have a huge number of hours in creation and curation of posts there. It’s an investment, whether we like to admit it or not. Losing access to a social media account can be stressful.

I seriously hope you never have to deal with this.

Spam that ain’t so yummy

Posted on March 11, 2019 by backuphill

email spam

I know we authorize our own abuse in some cases, but this is just a bit ridiculous don’t you think?

When we sign up for different services we are often asked if we want to receive emails regarding specials or things that meet our interests. In most cases, it is limited to one or two emails in a day. It is a little annoying, but I realized that I have given them permission to send me those emails.

Do deal with said emails, I have more than one email account. One that is my regular account where most of the important stuff get delivered. Bills, personal email, and other important stuff (that I select) gets to use that email address. The other address is essentially my “spam”. This email address gets the email that I don’t really find important but the emails that I believe will be useful. In most cases those are emails that are a result of a subscription or membership of some type.

So, yes, I have signed up for Groupon. But I don’t think I signed up to actually be spammed by them. I expect to get emails from them, but I didn’t expect to get an average of 5.5 emails per day! I mean seriously? How about we just put this info in one or two emails? I don’t look at most of them anyway, so is it really necessary in the first place? If I was looking for something I probably will visit their website to shop.

We used to get a ton of junk mail in our real, snail mail box. Now my email boxes are getting spammed in all sorts of ways. It’s rather annoying. No, it’s rather irritating.

What do you think? How do you deal with this stuff?

Making a deposit

Posted on February 27, 2019 by backuphill

Photo by maitree rimthong on Pexels.com

Banks are a strange creature. They pop up, they disappear, the combine, they stand the test of time or they don’t. Big banks will nickle and dime you to death with fees and small banks are inconvenient because of limited locations. Small banks grow, but rarely do you see a big bank get smaller to serve its customers better.

One point of irritation for me is deposit slips. Why do banks charge you for personalized deposit slips?

Banks need capital to operate. How do banks get said capital? Investors, of course, but they get money from their customers depositing money into the bank. As such you think they would do everything possible to encourage their customers to deposit money as easily as possible.

But, no, instead they charge you to have printed deposit slips with your data on it. Yes, they do have blank slips at the branch but who honestly remembers all the digits of their bank account number?

Anyway, it just seems to me that an establishment that is desperate for your money would make it easier for you to put it there. It is, after all, just a little piece of paper.

Buried in junk mail

Posted on July 26, 2018 by backuphill

Photo by Jaymantri on Pexels.com

Vacation usually means playing catch up at some point. If you were not on a “staycation” that means you were likely disconnected from your normal routine to some degree. As such, there will be at the very least a little catch up when you get home. For me, there was a TON of catch up since I was only able to connect electronically on a limited basis – partly because that was all that was available and partially because it was a self-imposed disconnect.

Anyway, catch up usually involves junk mail. TONS and tons of junk mail. Why is there so much of this crap?

It comes in the very real form of physical junk mail in the mailbox. Stacks and stacks of credit card offers, political campaign ads, grocery store ads, coupon packets, etc etc etc. I think after five days of being gone, I kept seven pieces of real mail (as in something I needed or wanted) out of about 50 items. At least junk mail delivered in this manner has been reduced to some degree (I swear junk mail is the only thing keeping the USPS afloat, but that is a discussion for another day).

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Then there is the electronic junk mail – at home and at work. Again, there has been a reduction of this blight since filters are getting better, but there is still a lot that makes it through. Work email literally took me TWO HOURS to get through! Most of it was dumb crap my co-workers feel the need to share with everyone in the office, but how do you know for sure unless you open it up and look? My three home email accounts, because of limited connectivity, were a little better. I was able to filter some of the junk out before I even got home. But, that still means an hour going through the necessary stuff and deleting the rest. (Three, you ask? Yes, one for main use and two for the “junk” you get from stores and memberships and the like.) I don’t delete emails until I have taken action in relation to it, so while I can sift through most of it there is that follow up that needs to be done for each one I felt the need to keep for one reason or another. That for another day…

Can people just stop talking to me? How about you stop sending me crap too?

focus photo of yellow paper near trash can

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com