Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–246 of 246 posts

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#241

Post by davidpfarrell »

When you have ${firstName}${middileInitial}${lastName}@${popularProvider}.com, you end up learning there are a LOT of people with your name who: 1) either themselves don't remember their ${hadToSettleFor} email address, i.e I get their billing reminders and medical statement emails, or 2) their loved ones/close friends don't, ie. I get party invites and group emails, etc.

Separately, but related, I remember getting a spam email back in the late 90's where the spammer CC'd instead BCC'd, and it was sent to over 100 addresses who were all clearly variations of my first and last name ... It was a fun when there were multiple reply-alls with "Are we ALL $firstName $lastNames's on this list?" --- Surreal

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#242

Post by logbiscuitswave »

chriscjcj wrote: post #97

I used to use an e-mail address a terrific domain name that I own. Without publicly disclosing specifics, it was like this: @ .com Thousands of people with this name, who didn't want to give out their real e-mail address, used this e-mail address when signing up for things online. They probably never thought it would be someone's actual address. I finally had to quit using it because of the tremendous amount of e-mai…

My Gmail account is the same way. I constantly get people using it as a throwaway email address for various dating sites, commerce sites, and porn sites. After enough annoying emails, I’ll typically change the account’s password or delete it if I can. (These sites usually aren’t the most reputable, so often times about the most I can do is change the password to lock them out.)

I don’t get why people do this. It’s not like it’s difficult to get a throwaway email account.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#243

Post by aendruk »

I also received several of these emails over the last few days, but I closed my Facebook account years ago.

Fortunately they include a feedback mechanism for this situation:

  If you didn't request a new password, [let us know](https://www.facebook.com/login/recover/cancel/…).

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#244

Post by joshka »

gnabgib wrote: post #161
joshka wrote: post #86

fairly simply fixed by making publicly available information (email address) not part of the process: - create an email address alias (random, unguessable) - change your login to use that email address - remove your phone number from Facebook There are many ways to do this (plus addressing, apple hide my email, account aliases, etc.) Pick your own approach.

I'm afraid this won't help. My closed FB account hits all three of these (unguessable local part, obscure domain, no other attached metadata) and I still get these reset emails. Seems like there's been an account-data leak.

Reopen it and change it?

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#245

Post by fragmede »

xg15 wrote: post #179
fragmede wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have been a convenience thing back when there were only a few sites on the Internet but it's unreasonable, and just not practical to expect users to memorize several hundred, good, unique passwords for all the websites and apps they'll use in their modern digital life. Login with Google/Facebook/Apple/auth0 help mitigate the number of passwords to remember, but then you are beholden to that company. Not all…

My bigger worry is less getting hacked and more losing access to the password manager: If I use an online one, I'm once again dependant on a third party that can change their terms (or have an outage or get hacked) tomorrow; if I use an offline one, I have to manage a password database which has to be backed up, synchronized across devices, etc. If I use a new device, I cannot log into any account if I don't have an…

Offline password managers offer sync features that make that issue more tractable. Better than having using the password variant scheme, anyway.

Re: Someone keeps trying to reset my Facebook password

#246

Post by akx »

obblekk wrote: post #136

I was a PM at instagram in 2016 when we got a lot of these complaints from celebrities and short usernames. Some users were getting hundreds of reset emails/day triggered by random people in the world trying to reset their password. It's a really hard problem to solve because if these users actually forgot their password someday, they would really want those emails. We ended up creating a snooze for 30 days button at…

It does exist on IG still, and I think it's a very elegant solution. Thanks!
Post reply on HN