Mark T. Tomczak on Nostr: I worked with a colleague at Google who's byphrase was "Don't optimize for the ...

I worked with a colleague at Google who's byphrase was "Don't optimize for the unusual case." Every time I hear about someone losing their account permanently and being lost in the labyrinthine halls of the recovery process that assumes a particular type of spherical point-like user, I think about the fact that he still works there and his philosophy is closer to the centroid of Google's philosophy on software than mine.

... anyway, a friend's parent got his Yahoo account compromised a little while ago, and he was able to reclaim it with one phone call. Someone at Yahoo checked the recent access logs, confirmed that it was obvious that someone had radically changed the access pattern of the account immediately after a password change, and *just reset the password back.* No muss no fuss.

So now I tell people to get a Yahoo account if they can.