how to create a new online account
Jan. 6th, 2017 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimac1. Go to an online vendor you've used before. Fill up your shopping cart.
2. Hit "checkout". The system will tell you to log into your account.
3. Curse quietly. All your old account information and passwords were lost when your computer crashed a year ago, and you haven't ordered with this vendor since then.
4. Try a few user names and passwords that you frequently use for low-security accounts. They don't work.
5. Since you think you know the username, click the "Reset password" button.
6. Now it asks you for the answers to your security questions. Discover that you don't remember the answers to your security questions.
7. But not to worry! It says that if you don't remember the answers to your security questions, you'll have to create a new account.
8. Go to the new account page.
8.1. By this time you've already spent more time trying to check out than you spent shopping.
9. Fill out everything on the account page.
10. The button doesn't work. Enable JavaScript.
11. This erases everything you've entered on the page. Fill it all out again.
11.1. By this time you've spent twice as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.
12. Hit the button. Get an error message saying it's matched up your information and you appear to already have an account. Duh. So it won't let you create a new one. Double-duh.
13. Curse again, more loudly this time. Go back to the login page and try again to remember your password and/or security questions. Fail.
14. Go back to the create-account page. Since you don't have another address, try changing your e-mail contact to a different account and your phone number to your cell phone.
15. It works! Go to the payment page.
16. Go the other room where your wallet is, because you can't remember your credit card number. You used to remember it, because of the frequency with which you order online, but the company reissued the credit card with a new number a few months ago. Note the part of the number you've forgotten, and return to the computer.
17. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's 3-digit security code.
18. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's expiration date.
18.1. You could have done all these at once, of course, or have just brought the card to the computer, but each time you forgot you'd need more information further down the page.
18.2. By this time you've spent four times as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.
19. Success at last.
20 (later). Get an e-mail at the address you used for the original account warning you that someone has been trying to break into your account, and it's been locked.
2. Hit "checkout". The system will tell you to log into your account.
3. Curse quietly. All your old account information and passwords were lost when your computer crashed a year ago, and you haven't ordered with this vendor since then.
4. Try a few user names and passwords that you frequently use for low-security accounts. They don't work.
5. Since you think you know the username, click the "Reset password" button.
6. Now it asks you for the answers to your security questions. Discover that you don't remember the answers to your security questions.
7. But not to worry! It says that if you don't remember the answers to your security questions, you'll have to create a new account.
8. Go to the new account page.
8.1. By this time you've already spent more time trying to check out than you spent shopping.
9. Fill out everything on the account page.
10. The button doesn't work. Enable JavaScript.
11. This erases everything you've entered on the page. Fill it all out again.
11.1. By this time you've spent twice as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.
12. Hit the button. Get an error message saying it's matched up your information and you appear to already have an account. Duh. So it won't let you create a new one. Double-duh.
13. Curse again, more loudly this time. Go back to the login page and try again to remember your password and/or security questions. Fail.
14. Go back to the create-account page. Since you don't have another address, try changing your e-mail contact to a different account and your phone number to your cell phone.
15. It works! Go to the payment page.
16. Go the other room where your wallet is, because you can't remember your credit card number. You used to remember it, because of the frequency with which you order online, but the company reissued the credit card with a new number a few months ago. Note the part of the number you've forgotten, and return to the computer.
17. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's 3-digit security code.
18. Go back to the wallet and look up the credit card's expiration date.
18.1. You could have done all these at once, of course, or have just brought the card to the computer, but each time you forgot you'd need more information further down the page.
18.2. By this time you've spent four times as much time trying to check out as you spent shopping.
19. Success at last.
20 (later). Get an e-mail at the address you used for the original account warning you that someone has been trying to break into your account, and it's been locked.
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no subject
Date: 2017-01-06 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 06:50 pm (UTC)Whoever set up that voice mail tree had clearly not thought through all the reasons someone might need to call them.
"This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 05:56 am (UTC)Security guy Bruce Schneier believes in writing down credentials and hiding them. The more secure version of this is to write down site and login on one side of a paper and passwords on the other, then cut the page down the center and hide them separately.
I have a password safe on my phone and multiple backups of the encrypted file, in different locations. With 95 sets of credentials....
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 07:23 am (UTC)The password safe is super-convenient. I always have my phone with me; if I open a new account of any type, I put in the new credentials immediately. And sometimes I let the safe generate passwords for me because that's an easy way to get a strong password.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 07:44 am (UTC)Remembering to, and then bothering to, put down new credentials somewhere else, especially when the computer is already saving them for me automatically, is exactly what I meant by "Ugh, what a nuisance."
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 07:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 08:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 03:59 pm (UTC)