Attention Perverts and Pedophiles!

If you are interested in confiscating a complete stranger's photos and online albums, it's quite simple. 

Yesterday, I tried to access an online photograph storage account I've had for many years.  The email address is not something I use anymore and I forgot the password.  Match made in hell.

To log me in, they asked online validation questions I could not answer.  The nickname of my oldest child?   Is that a joke?  They actually claimed I added that as a security question on June 3, 2009. Um, I doubt it since I have no children and my dog has 9000 nicknames I would be embarrassed to admit out loud other than to her.

 @#$()*&#@$@#(*$&)@#$&

I emailed their Customer Support team and here's part of the response I got -

"We will invite you to contact us via telephone so we can ask security questions about the account and determine that you are the owner, once we have reviewed that you are the owner of the account we will gladly update the E-mail address of your account so you can access it."

Great! More complicated trivia questions!  Metric conversions?  Periodical table of the elements?  Or maybe they should just ask why I have no nickname for my oldest child or why I have no children yet period. 

I assumed this would not go well but called anyway.

I was on hold for over 30 long minutes after selecting the "questions about the website" option. Apparently lots of other people forgot the town where their grandmother's neighbor was born (or something equally as ridiculous).  When I finally got a representative,  the pictures were transferred from my old email address to my new one in under 5 minutes.   He then (shockingly) validated my lack of confidence in Customer Service Reps by asking that I log in with my new email address and old password.  Hey, remember when I called because I LOST MY EFFING PASSWORD?  Pay attention or you won't get that promotion to Sr. Customer Service Rep you've been telling all your friends about.

I will admit, the process was fairly painless.  So I should be thrilled, right?
  
Not so much.  This was done with absolutely NO validation of my identity.  Comforting to know that pictures from my bachelorette party and birth of my nephew could easily be the property of, well, basically anyone.  Hopefully this guy wasn't trained at some giant school for budding Customer Service Professionals.  If he was, someone out there might actually own my car.  Or my house.  Or my body after I die.

Way to go, (rhymes with Adirondack) ______ Gallery! 




Yes, please give this guy unlimited access to the last 10 years of my life in easy-to-download images.