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Nov 18, 2009

Memo to the people at Yahoo! account services

When forcing someone to set security questions/answers in order to log in to a Y!Group, don’t ask them a name-based question (last name of first boss/first name of oldest cousin etc), allow them to provide an answer (sue, kim, ian, bob, tom, sam, jim, ann, etc) and then throw a strop that the answer needs to be at least 4 letters long.

With respect, if that was the case, you should have informed the parents a while ago, because you asked me for their name and THAT’S THEIR NAME.

Alternatively, you could always specify the minimum length requirement at the time of providing security Question/Answer couplets, instead of telling users they’ve done something wrong.

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Category: Life

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3 Responses

  1. Jemima says:
    November 18, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Could you please try to buy something online with a Visa card? Whoever designed the absurd password restrictions on the ‘extra security’ need to get a memo.

  2. Ted King says:
    November 22, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    How about those Flash games that tell you to upgrade your plug-in when you have the latest version of Flash 9 ? And when you take a look at the raw page it seems to be locked on an earlier version of Flash 9. Basically, ALL web pages that are non-vanilla should have an “Environment :” footer for people to refer to when something glitches. There’s a gremlin named Murphy on every team.

    P.S. I’m one of those people who have been burned by Flash 10 interrupting my web visits to various sites with bogus security warnings.

  3. Daniel says:
    November 23, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    I really despise the way that Yahoo is linked with Flickr.

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This is an individual post, which may not be very recent. For the latest stuff on meish dot org, please visit the main page.

By the way, I'm female. It doesn't have much impact on what I write about, or how I write, but I thought I'd point it out because so many people who link to this site seem to assume I'm male.

The clue's in the name: Meg. Like all those other female Megs.

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What's all this, then?

This is a personal site, created and curated continuously since early 2000 by Meg Pickard, a creative geek, passionate photographer, anthropologist and web experience /community /social media specialist, who works for The Guardian & lives in London, UK.
 
The site includes a blog - a personal and evolving collection of links, opinions, thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and musings - as well as a variety of other projects. It is also a place to aggregate some of the author's distributed web activity, like photos, links and music.
 
More info about this site and its author.

Important note #1

This is a personal site. The contents and opinions contained within don't necessarily reflect those of my employer, family, or cat. They think for themselves (though mostly about tuna, in at least one case), and so do I.

Important note #2

Since the overwhelming majority of content on this site is historical, it should be regarded in light of the context in which it was originally published, and not as indicative or revealing of current perspectives, preferences or experience.

Important note #3

While I work and spend a lot of time thinking and talking about social media, participatory technologies and community development strategies, the vast majority of content on this site is not about that.

This personal site isn't about anything, except the perpetual unfolding of one person's experience, and the perspectives, observations and opinions that involves and inspires.

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