The flerly formerly known as “flerly”

If you’re on ICQ, and you had me as 6628865 then I’m now 253260840, just because ICQ’s helpdesk is the bomb.

From what I have been able to glean, AOL/ICQ/Whomever-owns-that-shit-now, has forced some password restrictions on their users, which are supposedly causing problems with people whose passwords happened to NOT be 6-8 characters. If you were over 8 characters, you are supposedly just being truncated temporarily to the first 8 characters, but if you were under 6 characters, you are supposedly just screwed.

I’ve been reading about this in the forums for a couple days now, and the under six character folks can’t even use the website to force ICQ to reset their password so they can get in to set up a new compliant password. No matter what email address you put in, it is rejected.

The help files basically read that if you can’t use the website to retrieve your obviously “forgotten” password, then you must be an idiot, and just need to register a new ICQ number with a new password — which will this time force you through their process of limiting symbols, minimum characters, and forcing the association of an email address with the UIN, instead of just gleaning one out of your former profiles.

I was pretty perturbed by this, because though I am in idiot in the way that I was using a password that was less than six characters, and that it happens to be the same password that I’ve used since I first signed up with ICQ, I am pretty sure I am not an idiot because I forgot that password. I know it, because, I’ve been typing it in for years. If anything, ICQ forgot my password, not me.

And, you know, I would have been happy to alter my password to something at least one character longer to meet with their requirements if they had merely asked me. I would have also been happy to formally associate it with an email address, again, if they had but mentioned the need.

Instead, they rudely stopped letting me log in, blame me for not being able to remember my password, accuse me of forgetting any email addresses that have ever been listed as mine in my profile, and force me to register a new number.

And that is the state of things at present. One small annoyance in a day full of small annoyances.