Password Blues

Plugging in...


There are email programs out there that are looking after your safety, even if you are not. How so? They either require you to change your email password within a certain time frame, or they allow you set a reminder to change the email password. What happens when the reminder doesn't work as advertised, as in no email access at all??


An outlook.com user had set the reminder to kick in every 72 days. And kick in it did, but without any physical reminder: no text, no email, no nudge. The user tried to get email on their iPhone, and the dreaded "incorrect password" message reared its ugly head. The same user then tried to login to the email account on a laptop, and the same message appeared. Much head scratching and puzzled facial expressions occurred. The user was convinced that the email account had been hacked.


Not until several more tries on the iPhone to fetch email did the reminder finally kick in that prompted: you must change your email password. That in turn nudged the user to remember that they had set that option, um, 72 days ago.


ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - did you create a note about the email reminder external to email, and is it plugged in, and is it turned on?


Unplugged