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When I become Lord Supreme Ruler of Everything (applications for Australia are still available, but Algeria still goes to my cats as a litterbox), my second proclamation shall be as follows:
And I promise to make it as humorous as I can. :)
I have a yahoo.com email address. I won't put the name of it in print because of spiders and crawlers and what-not that scrape email addresses off anything readable and scannable, but suffice it to say that it is three letters long (yes, I have a three-letter yahoo.com address!), two of which are the same vowel and the remaining one of which is the 11th letter of the English alphabet. Got it? Good. :)
I get...well, I think a "crap-ton" would be the best way of putting it...of Spam weekly. Over the years, I have gotten my Spam-handling down to a science. I don't see any that I don't specifically seek out because it all goes into my trash folder.1 But because I do occasionally have legitimate email that winds up in the trash folder, I check it a few times per month to see what new ways people have come up with to scam their fellow man. Or woman.
One of the problems with having a three-letter yahoo.com address (think Disney snakes....) is that...well, you tend to get a lot of Spam. An inordinate amount, you might say. Because what happens is that people come to Yahoo.com and they think, "Hey, I want a free email account! I know! I'll get 'Bob@yahoo.com,' for my name is Bob!"2 (In my scenario, the person doing this is about as bright as a small appliance bulb, which may be giving too much credit to the person and surely insults the bulb. But I digress.)
So "Bob" goes to yahoo.com and says he wants 'bob@yahoo.com.' Yahoo, of course, replies that there is already one of those, and helpfully gives "Bob" some suggestions of names he could use. The average person who is as bright as a small appliance bulb is incapable of reading and less patient than a two-week-old hungry baby bird. So this annoying stuff comes up on screen, and without looking at it, "Bob" locates the "OK" button and clicks it! He goes off and starts signing onto sites using Bob@yahoo.com as his email!
Of course, what he didn't read on screen—that annoying stuff—was Yahoo saying "Sorry, you unbelievable moron, but 'Bob' was taken 2 femto-seconds after we went live.3 How 'bout Bob30528756123989794971@yahoo.com? [OK] [CANCEL]"
So you see the problem. Bob thinks he got bob@yahoo.com (Small. Appliance. Bulb.), but he really has something else entirely. But now, Bob is surfing all over the internet giving 'Bob@yahoo.com' as his email every single time an email address is asked for (small appliance bulb, remember?). And Bob—as well as the average non-savvy Internet user—never thinks to uncheck the "May we incessantly Spam you?" checkbox on account set up pages.
<Quick Digression>I am purposefully giving "Bob" the benefit of the doubt, here, and assuming he's just ignorant or stupid instead of malicious. But we all know that there are a lot of malicious (or cunning or sly or however you want to put it) Bobs out there who know perfectly well what their email address is: they just 'make one up' to use because they don't want the Spam themselves.</Quick Digression>
Now, let us consider the actual person who owns bob@yahoo.com for a moment. Let us call him "Robert." Robert is now getting a veritable crapload of email from all those sites that Bob has been giving Robert's email to indiscriminately. Bob visits a used car site in Minnesota; Robert gets the Spam. Bob visits a "Russian brides" dating site; Robert gets the (Cyrillic) Spam. Bob plays every online game known to mankind; Robert gets the Spam.
And because most companies that run websites requiring some form of user registration are...I hesitate to use the word 'evil' because that implies intentionally doing harm, so let's settle for 'willfully stupid,' the lion's share of them don't bother verifying an email address when it is given to them.
<Another Quick Digression> There are probably a number of ways this can be done, but the easiest two are as follows:
Even though it's the same amount of effort on the part of the Willfully Ignorant Web Site (WIWS for short) to send a "Welcome to RussianBridesWithNoSelfEsteem.com!" email as it would be to verify the account, they nevertheless send out the "Welcome" email.
Robert sees this email pop up in his box. "Oh, great," he thinks. "Another WIWS is Spamming me."
Robert has little recourse. The WIWS fall into three main groups:
Now, all of that up to this sentence was necessary background for me to get to the real meat of my rant. :)
Today, I checked yahoo.com and discovered a "Welcome to Pogo.com!" email and several follow-ups. As an aside, if I only get one or two emails of this type, I don't usually make a big deal of it, but I had three in the course of a two-day period, so....
I went to pogo.com and clicked on their Login screen. I clicked on "I forgot my password!" Lo! there was an option I almost never see available: "I forgot my username!" :)
So I typed in my three-letter yahoo email address (the repeated vowel is an 'a'...) and awaited the Pogo.com site to send me an email detailing how to take control of the account.
Imagine my shock and awe to discover that "I" was the owner of not one, not two, not three, but four accounts, all associated with my three-letter yahoo.com address. (TLYCA7) This went beyond the norm. They were clearly flouting my future Proclamation Number Two. They would have to be Dealt With.
I found their 866 number and called. I had to give my TLYCA and they asked for a phone number, but I said I didn't have a phone. They asked what they could do to help me.
I explained my situation as calmly and straightforwardly as possible, expecting them to sigh with resignation and do what I ask, which is normally what happens. That being, "Delete the accounts."
This guy then said, "I have no way of knowing you're the one who actually owns the email address, so I can't just delete these accounts."
This is when...I may have started to get...a trifle..."distinct." I hesitate to say I lost my temper, because I didn't. I just started speaking...distinctly. Perhaps a bit...snarkily. Even sarcastically. I may have said something like, "Do you actually understand how completely <expletive deleted> insane that is? The person or persons who created the accounts gave you my email address, and you didn't bother to verify that they owned it, but now you're giving me a hard time when all I want is to stop getting Spam?" I wasn't yelling...exactly. But LoudWoman did stop talking. As did several of my other cow-orkers.
Ahem. So, he got snippy back at me, indicating that he was just the messenger. And I said I understood that, but I just couldn't comprehend the insanity, and I asked him again if it made sense to him. He didn't answer. He did put me on hold to ask "his supervisor" what he should do.
I deep-breathed whilst listening to Electronic Arts'8 insipid hold music. When he came back, he gave me a reference ID, and told me I'd have to prove I owned the account by gaining access to all four of the accounts, changing them in some way, and then calling back. Then and only then would they delete the accounts.
I may have expressed my further incomprehension and he may have reiterated the "just the messenger" bit. My memory is a bit fuzzy.
So I get the passwords to all four accounts. Login to pogo.com. Change all four passwords to something calculated to annoy, and set every settable field for all four accounts to "To prove I own the email."
I then called back. I got a different help desk person. This time female. I gave her the reference ID, and was put on hold. More insipid hold music. Then she came back. "Sir, I've spoken to the original customer service agent." Uh-oh. :) She continued, "Can you give me the password for the account <account1>?"
"Sure. It's 'changeyourpolicy'."
There was something that sounded like a really weary sigh. Then a lot of typing. Then, "Can you give me the password for the account <account2>?"
"Yes, it is also 'changeyourpolicy.' It's kind of a theme."
Silence. More typing.
"Can you give me the password for the account <account3>?"
"Once again, it's 'changeyourpolicy.'"
Silence. More typing.
"Can you give me the—"
"That will be 'changeyourpolicy.'"
A more silent degree of silence than the silence the other times. More typing.
"Alright, Mr. [Kaa]9, the four accounts are blocked and all reference to your email has been removed from them. Is there anything else I can help you with, today?" (She did not add, "you unbelievable jerk," for which I admire her self-control.)
"Thank you. I'm just curious, though: you do get how utterly insane what we just had to do is, don't you? I mean, the guy that created the accounts gets a free pass, but I have to go through this?"
A brief pause, then "Yes, sir. I do."
I said, "Thank you. Just pass it along. That's all I ask."
We "have a nice day"ed each other (and to her credit, I think she might actually have meant it), and hung up.
Seriously, why do WIWS make it so hard to do something that's so unnecessary when it would be so easy to fix it?
So that's why the second proclamation. And the rant.
And before anyone points it out in the comments: I am absolutely, 100% aware of how big a jerk I was. And that they'll probably subscribe my TLYCA to 100 bad sites out of spite. And how they called me names and laughed and complained about 'stupid (l)users.' But, by all that is holy in every religion that has ever existed (except Invisible Pink Unicornism, because that's just silly), someone needed to hear what I had to say.
Which is why I'm composing a carefully worded—and far less whiny and melodramatic—letter to Electronic Arts' company officers.
Which I'm aware will have no effect, but again, someone there needs to hear how insane these policies are.
Rant over. :)
Be it hereby known that, henceforth, any software developer whomsoever shall programmeth a web site registration system that blindly and trustingly accepts any email typed into the "What is your email?" box and immediately starts Spamming that email without verifying (by any of several methods) that the person who typed the email address actually owns said address shall be slowly and painfully tortured to death, but only after they are stripped naked, painted purple, and forced to pole-dance atop a harpsichord whilst singing "I'm the worst developer in the whole world" in the key of G-minor. For my entertainment. And any of my minions who may wish to look on. (Seriously, Australia! How can you pass this up? Apply to be my loyal minion and you might get Australia!)I'm just going to go ahead and cut this because I know before I even type the first line that it's going to get long and extremely snarky and ranty. I'll try to curb my penchant for devolving into a string of pejoratives and expletives. Really.
And I promise to make it as humorous as I can. :)
I have a yahoo.com email address. I won't put the name of it in print because of spiders and crawlers and what-not that scrape email addresses off anything readable and scannable, but suffice it to say that it is three letters long (yes, I have a three-letter yahoo.com address!), two of which are the same vowel and the remaining one of which is the 11th letter of the English alphabet. Got it? Good. :)
I get...well, I think a "crap-ton" would be the best way of putting it...of Spam weekly. Over the years, I have gotten my Spam-handling down to a science. I don't see any that I don't specifically seek out because it all goes into my trash folder.1 But because I do occasionally have legitimate email that winds up in the trash folder, I check it a few times per month to see what new ways people have come up with to scam their fellow man. Or woman.
One of the problems with having a three-letter yahoo.com address (think Disney snakes....) is that...well, you tend to get a lot of Spam. An inordinate amount, you might say. Because what happens is that people come to Yahoo.com and they think, "Hey, I want a free email account! I know! I'll get 'Bob@yahoo.com,' for my name is Bob!"2 (In my scenario, the person doing this is about as bright as a small appliance bulb, which may be giving too much credit to the person and surely insults the bulb. But I digress.)
So "Bob" goes to yahoo.com and says he wants 'bob@yahoo.com.' Yahoo, of course, replies that there is already one of those, and helpfully gives "Bob" some suggestions of names he could use. The average person who is as bright as a small appliance bulb is incapable of reading and less patient than a two-week-old hungry baby bird. So this annoying stuff comes up on screen, and without looking at it, "Bob" locates the "OK" button and clicks it! He goes off and starts signing onto sites using Bob@yahoo.com as his email!
Of course, what he didn't read on screen—that annoying stuff—was Yahoo saying "Sorry, you unbelievable moron, but 'Bob' was taken 2 femto-seconds after we went live.3 How 'bout Bob30528756123989794971@yahoo.com? [OK] [CANCEL]"
So you see the problem. Bob thinks he got bob@yahoo.com (Small. Appliance. Bulb.), but he really has something else entirely. But now, Bob is surfing all over the internet giving 'Bob@yahoo.com' as his email every single time an email address is asked for (small appliance bulb, remember?). And Bob—as well as the average non-savvy Internet user—never thinks to uncheck the "May we incessantly Spam you?" checkbox on account set up pages.
<Quick Digression>I am purposefully giving "Bob" the benefit of the doubt, here, and assuming he's just ignorant or stupid instead of malicious. But we all know that there are a lot of malicious (or cunning or sly or however you want to put it) Bobs out there who know perfectly well what their email address is: they just 'make one up' to use because they don't want the Spam themselves.</Quick Digression>
Now, let us consider the actual person who owns bob@yahoo.com for a moment. Let us call him "Robert." Robert is now getting a veritable crapload of email from all those sites that Bob has been giving Robert's email to indiscriminately. Bob visits a used car site in Minnesota; Robert gets the Spam. Bob visits a "Russian brides" dating site; Robert gets the (Cyrillic) Spam. Bob plays every online game known to mankind; Robert gets the Spam.
And because most companies that run websites requiring some form of user registration are...I hesitate to use the word 'evil' because that implies intentionally doing harm, so let's settle for 'willfully stupid,' the lion's share of them don't bother verifying an email address when it is given to them.
<Another Quick Digression> There are probably a number of ways this can be done, but the easiest two are as follows:
- Create a random, temporary password for the account and email it to that email address. The user is now required to get his/her password from their email before being allowed to login. Until the first login occurs, the account is suspended, and will be canceled if no login occurs within, let's say, 5 days.
- Create a unique URL for the account and email it to that email address. The user is now required to click on the verification URL before the account is activated. Until activated, the account is suspended, and will be canceled if no login occurs.
Even though it's the same amount of effort on the part of the Willfully Ignorant Web Site (WIWS for short) to send a "Welcome to RussianBridesWithNoSelfEsteem.com!" email as it would be to verify the account, they nevertheless send out the "Welcome" email.
Robert sees this email pop up in his box. "Oh, great," he thinks. "Another WIWS is Spamming me."
Robert has little recourse. The WIWS fall into three main groups:
- They don't give a weasel's scrotal sack whether or not they're Spamming you, and offer no legitimate way of opting out.4,5
- They have a way for you to "take control" of the account by giving it your email account and asking for them to send the password, after which you can log in and either take control of the account or disable it in some way.
- They actually have a method of contacting customer care to take care of this kind of problem.6
Now, all of that up to this sentence was necessary background for me to get to the real meat of my rant. :)
Today, I checked yahoo.com and discovered a "Welcome to Pogo.com!" email and several follow-ups. As an aside, if I only get one or two emails of this type, I don't usually make a big deal of it, but I had three in the course of a two-day period, so....
I went to pogo.com and clicked on their Login screen. I clicked on "I forgot my password!" Lo! there was an option I almost never see available: "I forgot my username!" :)
So I typed in my three-letter yahoo email address (the repeated vowel is an 'a'...) and awaited the Pogo.com site to send me an email detailing how to take control of the account.
Imagine my shock and awe to discover that "I" was the owner of not one, not two, not three, but four accounts, all associated with my three-letter yahoo.com address. (TLYCA7) This went beyond the norm. They were clearly flouting my future Proclamation Number Two. They would have to be Dealt With.
I found their 866 number and called. I had to give my TLYCA and they asked for a phone number, but I said I didn't have a phone. They asked what they could do to help me.
I explained my situation as calmly and straightforwardly as possible, expecting them to sigh with resignation and do what I ask, which is normally what happens. That being, "Delete the accounts."
This guy then said, "I have no way of knowing you're the one who actually owns the email address, so I can't just delete these accounts."
This is when...I may have started to get...a trifle..."distinct." I hesitate to say I lost my temper, because I didn't. I just started speaking...distinctly. Perhaps a bit...snarkily. Even sarcastically. I may have said something like, "Do you actually understand how completely <expletive deleted> insane that is? The person or persons who created the accounts gave you my email address, and you didn't bother to verify that they owned it, but now you're giving me a hard time when all I want is to stop getting Spam?" I wasn't yelling...exactly. But LoudWoman did stop talking. As did several of my other cow-orkers.
Ahem. So, he got snippy back at me, indicating that he was just the messenger. And I said I understood that, but I just couldn't comprehend the insanity, and I asked him again if it made sense to him. He didn't answer. He did put me on hold to ask "his supervisor" what he should do.
I deep-breathed whilst listening to Electronic Arts'8 insipid hold music. When he came back, he gave me a reference ID, and told me I'd have to prove I owned the account by gaining access to all four of the accounts, changing them in some way, and then calling back. Then and only then would they delete the accounts.
I may have expressed my further incomprehension and he may have reiterated the "just the messenger" bit. My memory is a bit fuzzy.
So I get the passwords to all four accounts. Login to pogo.com. Change all four passwords to something calculated to annoy, and set every settable field for all four accounts to "To prove I own the email."
I then called back. I got a different help desk person. This time female. I gave her the reference ID, and was put on hold. More insipid hold music. Then she came back. "Sir, I've spoken to the original customer service agent." Uh-oh. :) She continued, "Can you give me the password for the account <account1>?"
"Sure. It's 'changeyourpolicy'."
There was something that sounded like a really weary sigh. Then a lot of typing. Then, "Can you give me the password for the account <account2>?"
"Yes, it is also 'changeyourpolicy.' It's kind of a theme."
Silence. More typing.
"Can you give me the password for the account <account3>?"
"Once again, it's 'changeyourpolicy.'"
Silence. More typing.
"Can you give me the—"
"That will be 'changeyourpolicy.'"
A more silent degree of silence than the silence the other times. More typing.
"Alright, Mr. [Kaa]9, the four accounts are blocked and all reference to your email has been removed from them. Is there anything else I can help you with, today?" (She did not add, "you unbelievable jerk," for which I admire her self-control.)
"Thank you. I'm just curious, though: you do get how utterly insane what we just had to do is, don't you? I mean, the guy that created the accounts gets a free pass, but I have to go through this?"
A brief pause, then "Yes, sir. I do."
I said, "Thank you. Just pass it along. That's all I ask."
We "have a nice day"ed each other (and to her credit, I think she might actually have meant it), and hung up.
Seriously, why do WIWS make it so hard to do something that's so unnecessary when it would be so easy to fix it?
So that's why the second proclamation. And the rant.
And before anyone points it out in the comments: I am absolutely, 100% aware of how big a jerk I was. And that they'll probably subscribe my TLYCA to 100 bad sites out of spite. And how they called me names and laughed and complained about 'stupid (l)users.' But, by all that is holy in every religion that has ever existed (except Invisible Pink Unicornism, because that's just silly), someone needed to hear what I had to say.
Which is why I'm composing a carefully worded—and far less whiny and melodramatic—letter to Electronic Arts' company officers.
Which I'm aware will have no effect, but again, someone there needs to hear how insane these policies are.
- If you're wondering how I accomplish this, I can cover it in another post.
- Not my actual email address.
- This is actually how I got my three-letter yahoo.com address. The very day the email went out from Yahoo saying 'We have free email!" I applied for and got my account. It was probably within the hour, actually.
- I'm certain that all of you who are reading this—my presumed minions, whether loyal or not (Remember! Australia is at stake, here!)—are smart enough to realize that one should never, ever, ever, ever, ever click on the "opt-out" link at the bottom of a Spam mail. Ever.
- The really sly ones not only require you to give them an email address, but a phone number or other bit of information. These really are the jerksome ones, because they require proof that you are who you say you are to destroy the account, but not to create it. They're not about to give up a verified legitimate email address.
- Seriously, if you have enough of a problem that you've made it a drop-down option in your 'Contact us' subject line box, just fix the damned problem!
- TLYCA is not three letters, but it is an initialism for 'Three-Letter Yahoo.Com Address.'
- I realized I didn't actually mention that Pogo.com is part of EA.
- Hey, look! It's three letters! And one of them is the 11th letter! And two are repeated 'a's!
Rant over. :)
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Because, really, loyal minion is usually a thankless enough job that you're not going to attract people if you can only pay them in vaporware. Why, that'd be like working for EA.
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Cats are pretty sure that evolution is overrated, and would like to remind you of the whole "once worshipped as gods" thing, and "by the way, where's our tiny round can of meat, monkey boy?"
I have to go right now and explain to them about grocery stores and getting home late and being tired and....<sigh>. I fear retribution may be at hand.
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In other news, you are truly amusing. That is all. ;)
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On the bright side, think of all the wool from those sheep.
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Also, they will have ketchup and it will not be considered specialty ethnic food.
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Also: where do I get the application for the Australia bit? 'Cos I distinctly recall having a discussion with ... someone on TIM ... oh so long ago, and it was firmly decided that I get Rob Hirst (the drummer for the former Midnight Oil) if any ownership change of Australia ever occurred.
Or something. Ahem. Carry on.
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