Password Reset

I'm sure there's some statistic about the average work computer user forgetting their password about 50 times a month, and each phonecall to get it reset costs about five quid or something daft. To help counter these costs, my work has just installed a new thing on our intranet which lets us reset our own passwords, for three of our main systems, without having to make a phonecall. Theoretically I'm sure this has to be a good thing.

I tried it out today as I needed a password reset.

I loaded up the app, and the first thing I had to do was enter a username and password. I knew my username, but wasn't totally sure what my password was. I had a guess. It didn't work. I guessed again and got it wrong again. I tried one more time. It still didn't work but this time it also said I was now locked out. I was now confused. I wanted my password reset but I was locked out of the thing that would reset my password because I didn't know it and probably needed it reset. Something of a dilemma here.

I went back to plan A and dialed the IT helpdesk (always fun).

A man answered. He asked how I could help. I said I needed a password reset. He asked which password, and I said it was for the password management application. I felt foolish saying this. Unfortunately, the man had never heard of the password management system and so he wasn't much use. I felt a bit stuck. I tried to explain that it was a new thing, and I told him how to access it and everything, but he still couldn't help. As normal I felt I knew more about my IT problem than the IT people did.

After a short while I gave up and just figured I could get the original password I wanted reset, reset instead and I could worry about the password resetting password another time. I asked if I could do this and he said ok, but he'd have to ask me a couple of security questions first. No problem, said I. How hard could they be?

First up, an easy one. What were the eighth and ninth letters of the name of my secondary school? After working out which school this was, all I had to do was write the name down, count the letters and say them out loud. I did, and he then asked me the next question. This was harder as it involved the names of my mother. I always get these wrong as she has a first name and a middle name but she uses the middle name as her first name. Not the full version of it though - an abbreviated version. Hence when I was asked what the fourth and fifth letters in my mother's middle name were, I didn't know whether it was her full middle name, her shortened middle name or her normal first name which is a bit like a middle name because she uses her middle name as a first name. Confused? I was. I got it wrong.

I had failed the security check. Darnit.

Thankfully, rather than sending the guards round to have me thrown out onto the street, he just gave me one last chance. I nearly got this wrong too because it was about my dad's name and he has a very similar thing going on as my mum does - using a middle name as a first name. Luckily, the letters that were asked for could only have come from one of his names as the other was too short.

So finally I passed the test and the man reset my password.

This had all been so much fun that I had sadly forgotten what it was I needed to do that had made me need to get my password reset in the first place. I love technology - it makes us so much more productive.