Had to log into #Facebook for the first time in months/years, and to access the message I was sent, I was faced with this.
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@tantramar I had a major major argument with my mother related to this.
She forgot her pin.
Got a her the new phone she wanted. Can’t access chat history and I explain to her it’s not possible to recover chat history if she doesn’t remember.
She blames me, somehow, for the issue and she keeps insisting she will find someone who will fix the chat history for her, despite me explaining that without the code she can’t.She keeps walking around with two phones for over a year because of that.
@renata Passwords & PINs & even biometrics are serious pain-points. I wish passkeys were easier for people to get their heads around.
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@tantramar
There’s more
I explain to her that the phone without a SIM cannot receive calls and is essentially a brick if not connected to wifi, she also doesn’t believe me. She says she will find someone to fix it.
My mom is very aware I have been a very senior tech person for like 25 years but somehow does this mental gymnastics that it HAS to work and it MUST be my fault that it’s broken.I swear I will never buy her an electronic device ever again.
@renata I’m really quick to send people to official support channels. It works even better if there aren’t any (as with social media companies, Gmail, etc.).
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@renata I’m really quick to send people to official support channels. It works even better if there aren’t any (as with social media companies, Gmail, etc.).
@tantramar I told her that. She doesn’t speak English very well, so it was even better. She went to her cell phone provider store. They told her it was not their problem (like, duh). Then she asked “this boy she knows who’s very good with phones” and of course he said what I said. Then she asked her nurse. She kept asking a chain of people, and, after a year, she quietly gave up but never told me I was right.
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@tantramar I told her that. She doesn’t speak English very well, so it was even better. She went to her cell phone provider store. They told her it was not their problem (like, duh). Then she asked “this boy she knows who’s very good with phones” and of course he said what I said. Then she asked her nurse. She kept asking a chain of people, and, after a year, she quietly gave up but never told me I was right.
@tantramar The lesson being: never help relatives with a professional skill
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@tantramar Yeah, they pushed that out last year.
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@tantramar I told her that. She doesn’t speak English very well, so it was even better. She went to her cell phone provider store. They told her it was not their problem (like, duh). Then she asked “this boy she knows who’s very good with phones” and of course he said what I said. Then she asked her nurse. She kept asking a chain of people, and, after a year, she quietly gave up but never told me I was right.
@renata Not just that you were right — which is bad enough — but that she was wrong. People suck at that.
I had the opposite problem: my dad was so reluctant to waste my time that when an “Apple Support” banner ad on website told him his Mac had a virus he called the number and gave remote access for a half hour before they demanded credit card info and he hung up. Happily, I hadn’t set him up with an Admin user account; they couldn’t do much but look around.
Still took weeks to clean up; all because he wanted to save me 2 minutes.
[clean-up included changing their phone number because Mom had dementia by then & would’ve cheerfully told any stranger anything, and monitoring his email in case they tried to send password resets.]
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@tantramar Yeah, they pushed that out last year.
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@renata Not just that you were right — which is bad enough — but that she was wrong. People suck at that.
I had the opposite problem: my dad was so reluctant to waste my time that when an “Apple Support” banner ad on website told him his Mac had a virus he called the number and gave remote access for a half hour before they demanded credit card info and he hung up. Happily, I hadn’t set him up with an Admin user account; they couldn’t do much but look around.
Still took weeks to clean up; all because he wanted to save me 2 minutes.
[clean-up included changing their phone number because Mom had dementia by then & would’ve cheerfully told any stranger anything, and monitoring his email in case they tried to send password resets.]
@tantramar Not the virus alert!
I’m glad he didn’t give credit card, that would have been an even worse headache!
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@tantramar Not the virus alert!
I’m glad he didn’t give credit card, that would have been an even worse headache!
@renata @tantramar I had a variation of this with users who insisted on weak passwords (often finding a way to defeat strong password checks by the brilliant method of adding a ! to the end). I'd tell them they were vulnerable to being hacked and record the date. Then when they came back to assert that it was my fault they got hacked, I'd forward the email where i told them their password sucked.
You can't fix stupid.
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R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topicR relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@renata @tantramar I had a variation of this with users who insisted on weak passwords (often finding a way to defeat strong password checks by the brilliant method of adding a ! to the end). I'd tell them they were vulnerable to being hacked and record the date. Then when they came back to assert that it was my fault they got hacked, I'd forward the email where i told them their password sucked.
You can't fix stupid.
@alan @renata Took me *years* to convince my Dad to get onto the 1Password train. When I finally did, we sat down and worked out a master password that was strong but memorable. And he remembered it!
But he also misunderstood it all and got things precisely backwards: HE CHANGED ALL OF HIS ACCOUNT PASSWORDS TO BE THAT NEW MASTER PASSWORD.
️If he hadn’t bragged to me about how proud he was of this, I might never have known.
