03-09-2012, 04:59
So a few months ago I decided to change my eBay account name to one that better suited the real me, and whilst doing so, update my email address from the old one I barely ever check anymore to the new one for the real me.
Even though when I first opened an eBay account as "slicersv" with the email "slicersv", there had been no issues, I now had an eBay account name of abidrew85 and their system refused to change my email address. Why? Because it was also abidrew85.
After spitting and cursing and becoming quite seriously irritated at the idiotic bother, I tried changing my account name. OOPS! Can only do this once a month.
So I try again... and switch in an underscore and...... still no go.
So I call eBay and try to politely ask them to brute force their damned system. And they're like. No, we can't do that.
So... I now have to either wait another month to try yet again... or... I'm thinking it'll just be easier to start a brand spanking new bloody account.
All of this brings me to a topic that you realllllly don't want to bring me to. Because I'm quite bloody passionate about it: internet security.
What eBay's new policy is trying to do is to force a kind of security through obfuscation, which is the absolute weakest form of security out there.
The basic theory is that of hiding, or burying, the truth. If you never use the same name or password twice, ever, and work very hard to unlink everything from everything, you'll so completely confuse any would-be hacker and they'll just leave you alone.
This is completely untrue, baseless, and ridiculous. Besides not even working, it forces the individual to have to remember a whole slew of account names and passwords when just one each would suffice. Their username can be whatever the hell they want, it doesn't matter. Their password should be a strong one including both capitalized and lower case letters and numbers. Special characters really need not apply, though some sites force them, while still others refuse them. They should come up with their own personal password encoding method to avoid using any "plain word" passwords. Admittedly not easy to do. Especially when sites like eBay force you to come up with dozens of them.
When you attempt to do security by obfuscation, you actually make it much much easier for hackers to attack you: you confuse yourself, and the hackers immediately take advantage of this.
My purpose to this rant? Just getting it out of my system. I needed to let it out.
Even though when I first opened an eBay account as "slicersv" with the email "slicersv", there had been no issues, I now had an eBay account name of abidrew85 and their system refused to change my email address. Why? Because it was also abidrew85.
After spitting and cursing and becoming quite seriously irritated at the idiotic bother, I tried changing my account name. OOPS! Can only do this once a month.
So I try again... and switch in an underscore and...... still no go.
So I call eBay and try to politely ask them to brute force their damned system. And they're like. No, we can't do that.
So... I now have to either wait another month to try yet again... or... I'm thinking it'll just be easier to start a brand spanking new bloody account.
All of this brings me to a topic that you realllllly don't want to bring me to. Because I'm quite bloody passionate about it: internet security.
What eBay's new policy is trying to do is to force a kind of security through obfuscation, which is the absolute weakest form of security out there.
The basic theory is that of hiding, or burying, the truth. If you never use the same name or password twice, ever, and work very hard to unlink everything from everything, you'll so completely confuse any would-be hacker and they'll just leave you alone.
This is completely untrue, baseless, and ridiculous. Besides not even working, it forces the individual to have to remember a whole slew of account names and passwords when just one each would suffice. Their username can be whatever the hell they want, it doesn't matter. Their password should be a strong one including both capitalized and lower case letters and numbers. Special characters really need not apply, though some sites force them, while still others refuse them. They should come up with their own personal password encoding method to avoid using any "plain word" passwords. Admittedly not easy to do. Especially when sites like eBay force you to come up with dozens of them.
When you attempt to do security by obfuscation, you actually make it much much easier for hackers to attack you: you confuse yourself, and the hackers immediately take advantage of this.
My purpose to this rant? Just getting it out of my system. I needed to let it out.
I shouldn't have gone off like this here, or anywhere 