Venting The madness of technology

[GhostInTheMachine]

The situation I've found myself lately is absurd. Thanks to how technologically enslaved everything is, if you so much as dare to lose phone service or even get a new number, you will end up locked out of many of your accounts because they just refuse to let you in otherwise. I have been getting annoyed by spam e-mails from old services I no longer use for quiet a while now, and because the number they required me to tie their services to no longer exists, I can't even log in to delete them. They say you can just contact support, but how exactly am I supposed to do that with no god damned phone? I've told people this before, that these days, not having a phone or email essentially renders you not a person.

Even if I get in contact with support, it's usually somebody who's reading off a script, and not trained in any way to deviate from it so that they can help you. If you ask any sort of questions they just loop back endlessly to the script which never helps, even if you clearly tell them so. I've been locked out of my ability to make important transactions because of this, which has not helped my current situation of being broke and helpless. Those who are privileged enough to coast on other's shoulders will look at you confused and offer the most inane suggestions, completely ignorant to that fact that if you don't have certain prerequisites, you can't even perform basic tasks. What exactly am I supposed to do at this point, just be screwed?



They often don't even give you alternative methods other than "contact support" which 9 times out of 10 is a bot that in many cases will outright tell you it can't help you with "specific security issues". So now, I have to waste a massive deal of time just trying to find anybody who can just push two buttons so that I can fix my accounts and be able to function as a person again. How dare I be poor, how dare I lack privilege, how dare I be unlucky in life, this is my punishment for daring to be lower class and thinking that I could even be given the chance to scrape out of the rut. People wonder why suicide is at an all time high, but never have to deal with the consequences of the society they helped build.

It may seem mundane, but crap like this genuinely destroys people's lives by being the first in a long line of dominoes that eventually end up just making people go mad because they simply don't have the time nor resources to deal with it. I'd love to just get a job, but you can't do that without a phone or email. I'd love to have a phone, but you can't do that without money. I'd love to have money, but you can't have that without a job. This vicious cycle goes ignored and becomes worse and all the people with privilege and luxury don't even bat an eye until one day it comes back and bites them in the ass. I'm fine with with a lot of the progress of technology, but small seemingly mundane things like this drive me absolutely mad, because there is NO REASON it should be this way.

My life shouldn't be more of a chore than it needs to be because Faceless Corpo #21423634 is too lazy and useless to make a simple method of account recovery. I shouldn't be pushed further and further to the brink of ending it all because the vast majority of people are so caught up in their Hulu and Netflix that they can't see the people starving because they didn't have a phone.

 

[Outsidelessness]

If you so much as dare to lose phone service or even get a new number, you will end up locked out of many of your accounts because they just refuse to let you in otherwise.

Don't use SMS 2FA, simswapping exists and can increase your risk of losing the accounts through that means. There are many 2FA services out there (like authy, for example) that are able to be on multiple platforms.

I have been getting annoyed by spam e-mails from old services I no longer use for quiet a while now, and because the number they required me to tie their services to no longer exists, I can't even log in to delete them. They say you can just contact support, but how exactly am I supposed to do that with no god damned phone? I've told people this before, that these days, not having a phone or email essentially renders you not a person.

Make a new e-mail account and use KeePassXC to manage your logins. It's an excellent offline password manager that is managed off encrypted password database files that you can just safely copy to a USB and take with you. This will definitely serve useful for some of the problems you're having. As for the email spam, decentralize your emails. For accounts on services that you'll only temporarily use, you can use TempMail. For stuff that you will use often, just decentralize (use several) emails and save them to your KeePassXC database. If you ever don't want to give your phone number to a website, you can use smspva.

Maybe you could contact your previous phone carrier to lease you back the same phone number?

They often don't even give you alternative methods other than "contact support" which 9 times out of 10 is a bot that in many cases will outright tell you it can't help you with "specific security issues". So now, I have to waste a massive deal of time just trying to find anybody who can just push two buttons so that I can fix my accounts and be able to function as a person again.

The reason why corporations do this bullshit a lot is because they are garnering so much consumers that giving each one a cohesive response is downright impossible. The reason why they tell you there's security issues is because finding someone who's able to solve this problem for you is similar to a hacker doing the same thing to access someone else's account, which means it's probably going to be as hard as one another. They're definitely ruining things by both denying support and occasionally accepting malicious requests, but that is always inevitable from companies and literally nothing can solve it.

It's extremely frustrating shit. I hope you get your money back and move to fidelity from cuckhood.



Welcome to SaSu by the way, I'm sorry that you're here.

 

[GhostInTheMachine]

"Don't use SMS 2FA, simswapping exists and can increase your risk of losing the accounts through that means. There are many 2FA services out there (like authy, for example) that are able to be on multiple platforms."

Too little, too late, the damage is done. I know now never to use 2FA again since I have never had the "added security" do anything but screw me over.

Make a new e-mail account and use KeePassXC to manage your logins. It's an excellent offline password manager that is managed off encrypted password database files that you can just safely copy to a USB and take with you. This will definitely serve useful for some of the problems you're having. As for the email spam, decentralize your emails. For accounts on services that you'll only temporarily use, you can use TempMail. For stuff that you will use often, just decentralize (use several) emails and save them to your KeePassXC database. If you ever don't want to give your phone number to a website, you can use smspva.

This would actually make the problem worse since it would not untie my accounts from the old emails. Perhaps after I solve the current issue I will make the switch, but for now I am stuck navigating this absurd maze. Very good information to have though.

Maybe you could contact your previous phone carrier to lease you back the same phone number?

Hmm, maybe. I'll look into that. However given how every other company deals with things, I highly expect a fat no.

The reason why corporations do this bullshit a lot is because they are garnering so much consumers that giving each one a cohesive response is downright impossible. The reason why they tell you there's security issues is because finding someone who's able to solve this problem for you is similar to a hacker doing the same thing to access someone else's account, which means it's probably going to be as hard as one another. They're definitely ruining things by both denying support and occasionally accepting malicious requests, but that is always inevitable from companies and literally nothing can solve it.

It's extremely frustrating shit. I hope you get your money back and move to fidelity from cuckhood.

I thought the same at first, but in many cases, all I would need to change is the phone number on the account. For example, I have all of my login credentials from my Amazon and eBay accounts *except* for my old phone number, and because customer support refused to just remove the phone number despite me having all other identifying information, they just tell me to make a new account which doesn't solve my issue of the things that are tied up in my old account. I use them to sell things as well as needing the buy history as a useful archive of things I may need again.

Even when they offer me an alternative method, the information they ask for is literally impossible to obtain because they ask for things like "purchase codes from you last transactions" which my bank doesn't track, so that doesn't lead to any fruit. It's all a situation of "well, that's not our problem" and a massive lack of empathy under the guise of "for your protection". Very frustrating all around, I agree.

Welcome to SaSu by the way, I'm sorry that you're here.

Thank you, I'm not sorry, in many ways sitting in the bus station is liberating.