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Re password reset workflow issues: I had an account at a bank where password reset always failed. I had to go through a VERY convoluted process with customer

by toss1 3y ago

Re password reset workflow issues: I had an account at a bank where password reset always failed. I had to go through a VERY convoluted process with customer website support to get it fixed. It turned out that the problem was that my registered email address was just two characters (my initials) to the left of the "@", e.g., ab@mydomain.com. They allowed me to enter and use it throughout the system without any error flagging whatsoever, but it completely broke the password system. They claim to have raised it as a bug, but never fixed in 3 years+ (moving away from them now).

robocat 3y ago
After 50 years of software crud, eventually a civilisation ending bug occurs and it can't be fixed (like how Telstra couldn't fix their phone system because the phone system was down). That's why we are all alone in the universe. Enjoy life while civilisation still works!
filoleg 3y ago
This comment just unlocked a new fear of mine. I specifically got a custom domain and email address for any non-personal/"professional" comms, which is essentially just me@<custom-domain-featuring-my-name>.com. At least with non-ASCII characters in passwords, while I think it is stupid to not handle those properly, I can at least see some sort of an excuse there, no matter how weak it is. All it takes to mess this up is not thinking about handling those scenarios, so I can definitely see "this issue was created due to us not thinking about this possibility or not willing to deal with handling it." But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses?
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  > But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses? Wild guess: someone copy-pasted an incorrect email address validation regex, and different parts of the system are using different criteria for email address validation.
- int_19h 3y ago
  FWIW I have an email that is me@...org, and I've been using it for over a decade now without a single issue despite having lots of accounts created using it.
  - toss1 3y ago
    Same. I've had this 2-char email addr for nearly two decades and this is the only issue I've had, but it's a doozy. It even took their tech support days to find it. I'm still boggled that it's a problem.

by toss1 3y ago

robocat 3y ago

After 50 years of software crud, eventually a civilisation ending bug occurs and it can't be fixed (like how Telstra couldn't fix their phone system because the phone system was down). That's why we are all alone in the universe. Enjoy life while civilisation still works!

filoleg 3y ago

This comment just unlocked a new fear of mine. I specifically got a custom domain and email address for any non-personal/"professional" comms, which is essentially just me@<custom-domain-featuring-my-name>.com. At least with non-ASCII characters in passwords, while I think it is stupid to not handle those properly, I can at least see some sort of an excuse there, no matter how weak it is. All it takes to mess this up is not thinking about handling those scenarios, so I can definitely see "this issue was created due to us not thinking about this possibility or not willing to deal with handling it." But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses?

JoshTriplett 3y ago
> But what's even the reason to not allow sub-3-character local portions of emails? How does one even mess those up, aside from intentionally setting some triggers for less than 3 characters in local portions of email addresses? Wild guess: someone copy-pasted an incorrect email address validation regex, and different parts of the system are using different criteria for email address validation.
int_19h 3y ago
FWIW I have an email that is me@...org, and I've been using it for over a decade now without a single issue despite having lots of accounts created using it.
- toss1 3y ago
  Same. I've had this 2-char email addr for nearly two decades and this is the only issue I've had, but it's a doozy. It even took their tech support days to find it. I'm still boggled that it's a problem.