Dick Pountain/Idealog 261/04 April 2016 13:15
It's a cliche, but none the less true, that many IT problems are caused by the unholy rapidity of change in our industry. However I've just had an irritating lesson in the opposite case, where sometimes things that remain the same for too long can get you into trouble. It all started last week when a friend in Spain emailed to say that mail to my main dick@dickpountain.co.uk address was bouncing, and it soon turned into a tragicomedy.
A test mail showed mail was indeed broken, and that my website at www.dickpountain.co.uk had become inaccessible too. Something nasty had happened to my domain. This wasn't without precedent as I wrote here exactly a year ago in PC Pro 249 about the way Google's tightened security had busted my site. The first step, equivalent in plumbing terms to lifting the manhole lid, is to log into the website of my domain registrar Freeparking, which I duly attempted only to be rudely rebuffed. Their website has been completely redesigned and my password no longer worked - message says it was too weak so they'd automatically replaced it with a stronger one. A stronger one that unfortunately they'd omitted to tell me.
So, click on the "Forgot Password" button where it asks me to enter the email address my account was opened with. Trying all four addresses I've used over the last decade, one after the other, garners nothing but "password change request failed". Send an email to Freeparking support, who reply within the hour (my experience with them has always been good). Unfortunately their reply is that my domain has expired. Gobsmacked, because for the eight years I've had the domain they've always sent me a renewal reminder in plenty of time. Flurry of emails establishes that there's still time to renew before the domain name gets scrubbed or sold, but to do that I have to get into my account. Can they tell me the password? No they can't, but they can tell me the right email address is my BTinternet address. Go back to Forgot Password and use that, but still no password reset mail.
At this point I must explain my neo-byzantine email architecture. Gmail is my main hub where I read and write all my mail. It gathers POP mail from my old Aol and Cix addresses, and dickpountain.co.uk is simply redirected into it, but all mail redirected from dickpountain.co.uk also gets copied to my BTinternet account as a sort of backup. Unfortunately, with the domain expired, that feedback loop appears to have broken too.
By now I'm starting to gibber under my breath, and the word "nightmare" has cropped up in a couple of messages to support. I ask them to change the email address on my account to my Gmail address, but they can't do that without full identity verification, so I send a scan of my passport, they change the address, and password resets still don't arrive... Now desperate, I try once more entering each of four old addresses and make this discovery: three of them say "password reset request failed", but Aol actually says nothing. Whirring of mental cogs, clatter of deductions: the account address is actually Aol and reset requests are going there, but Gmail isn't harvesting them. Go to Aol.com, and try to access my email account (which has been dormant for best part of a decade) and am told that due to "irregular activities" the account has been locked. I now know that a Lenovo Yoga doesn't show teeth marks...
Another whole email correspondence ensues with aolukverify@aol.com, with both a passport and water bill required this time, and I get back into the Aol account, where sure enough are all the password reset mails, as well as Freeparking's renewal reminders. I get back into Freeparking account and after a bit of nonsense involving PayPal, VISA and HSBC I renew my domain. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the serious way both companies treated my security, and their support people were both helpful and efficient. There's really no moral to this tale beyond the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: ignore something for long enough and entropy will break it while your back is turned.
The only thing is, it sparked off a horrible fantasy. It's the year 2025 and President Trump is getting ratty as the end of his second term approaches. Vladimir Putin, who has married one of his ex-wives, makes one nasty jibe too many over the phone and Donald presses the Big Red button - then thinks better of it and goes to the Big Green Reset button. He can't remember the password, and on pressing Forgot Password the memorable question is the middle name of his second wife (case-and-accent-sensitive)...
