By Charles Miller
While watching the news one night, I heard one of the commentators use a phrase so profound I had to jump up from where I was sitting to quickly find a pen and paper so I could write it down. The topic of discussion was political, specifically how dealing with officialdom always seemed to be so difficult and how bureaucrats are forever making up burdensome regulations. The commentator called it an “ideology of punishment.” An example to which many people can relate is dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), where bureaucrats seem to take sadistic pleasure in making your dealing with them as unpleasant as possible.
Over the last few years, I have noted that this ideology of punishment has crept into the world of Information Technology, mainly when it comes to how careless users who forget their passwords are treated. Apple, Google, Microsoft, all the big tech companies now seem to take the position that anyone who forgets a password is someone who should be punished.
Back in the day, if you lost your password for your Hotmail or Yahoo email account, there was a phone number you could call to speak to a real person who was willing to help. Those days are long gone. First, the phone service was outsourced to India and then discontinued altogether. Today you can only communicate with free email providers using an automated system online that asks you to fill in information on a website, then it says you will receive an answer in 1 or 2 business days. When the automated system does respond, it usually needs more information, and you are told to wait a few more days. It can easily take a week or two answering questions this way when it used to be possible to handle such cases in one day by phone. Ideology of punishment.
Apple does still offer telephone support to its customers, but that does not speed up the process. If you ever have to go through the procedure to recover access to your Apple account, there is a mandatory waiting time of 14 days. It does not matter how much you plead; no matter how much you cry, Apple makes you wait two weeks before starting to assist you. Apple claims this is for your security and protection. That is true, but it also sounds like an ideology of punishment.
In order to avoid becoming the recipient of this punishment, there are several things you should do today. Everywhere you use a password (such as email, banks, social media, phone company, airlines), you should visit their website to look at your user profile. You should look for outdated information, such as the mailing address you moved away from years ago or a cell phone number you have changed. If you do not know the answers to your “secret questions,” you should enter them again, and this time write down the answers. Every company seems to have a slightly different procedure for resetting a lost password, so before you get locked out of some important account, it would be prudent to learn about that procedure so as to be ready in case you ever need to use it.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
