This reminds me of the time that I obtained my original cleartext password for my old tripod.com account by simply emailing their tech support from an email acc

This reminds me of the time that I obtained my original cleartext password for my old tripod.com account by simply emailing their tech support from an email account not associated with the tripod account. The email address from which I contacted them had the same username as my tripod account email, just at a different domain. Their response email was simply my password. Not a password reset link, not a new random password. No questions asked. This happened less than 5 years ago, when password hashing should be standard practice. But tripod was created in the 1990s when it wasn't standard, and I guess there was no budget/willingness to refactor the old database and login code. I was not surprised to hear a few years later that their cleartext password database had been hacked and published.