Password Protected
Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps.

No, I'm not changing my blog over to a password protected blog. Mostly because I don't believe anyone really cares enough about what I have to say to remember my password and sign in to read it. I won't ask that of you.

I had to change my password on my hotmail account. I have never changed the password on my hotmail account. I learned when changing my password that I have had my hotmail account since December 19, 2001. So remembering a new password is going to be a pain in the ass because right now it's just muscel memory. Good thing I log in to hotmail in the morning and leave it open all day.

More than that, even though I know I shouldn't, I have the same password for everything on the internet. Except those stupid accounts that make you have a number in them - for them I have the same password with a number in it.

I had to change my password because I got an email from ebay that said someone might have stolen access to my ebay account and I could protect it by changing the password to my primary email address. Now I haven't used my ebay account since January of 2004 when I purchased a brand-new still in the box Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring Samwise action figure with real pots and pans swinging action. But I have a half.com account and half.com is owned by ebay and I use my half.com account all the time to look at books I'd like to read that are for sale for 75 cents.

So I decided it could be serious and I followed the email from ebay's instructions and changed my password. Then I went to their website for Live Help so they would give me permission to re-enter my own account. While I was waiting for a customer service represented I realized that I looked at my half.com account yesterday. I added two more books (available for 75 cents each plus shipping) to my favorites list. I was considering emailing my User ID and password to a few people with a note saying check out my favorites list, I'd really like to read these books and you could buy them for me for just 75 cents. You could wait till you have a whole box of books and ship them to Romania and not only would I be your best friend for life, I would reimburse you the cost of shipping when I, you know, have money again in USD.

It occured to me that since I entered my own account from a computer accessing the internet from Romania, I was probably shut out of my account to protect me from myself. Somehow the people who keep track of this sort of thing have named Romania the number one country in the world for illegal things done on the internet. I've had this problem before trying to sign up for Yahoo Voice which is cheaper than Skype. (Skype by the way never helped me with my problem. I just emailed my password to my mom - which was the same password as my email password and told her to buy me Skype credit from the U.S.) These companies don't want my money because they don't believe that a perfectly good U.S. credit card could be used from Romania for a healthy purpose. Granted, they probably have good reasons for believing this but it makes things very difficult for the totally innocent holders of perfectly good U.S. credit cards in Romania.

So I log on to Live Help and start chatting Instant Messenger style with a guy named Randall who I think might even bee a real person, although his typing was very scripted and he kept using my name and reassuring me in a very "this crisis will all be over soon" kind of way. I informed him that I'm a Peace Corps volunteer in Romania and I was likely the reason I was shut out of my account. After consulting whatever file on me ebay has registered under my username (which is the same as my username for my email address) he informed me that everything would be fine. I just have to fax a copy of an ID like my driver's license or a bill to ebay's fraud department and they would make sure the address matched and then I would be allowed in my account again.

There's no way I'm paying to send an international fax. I didn't tell him I haven't lived at the address on my driver's license (Pine Street, Stevens Point) since before I set up my hotmail account. Instead I said, the address on my utility bill won't match because I'm living in Romania now. My bills are in Romanian and the address on the bill is where I'm currently living but the name is my landlord's father. (And by the way I don't even get an electricity bill I just know that once a month I have to go to the Cashier Electric after writing down the number on the meter, or they'll shut off my electricity.)

Randall consulted his file. He told me someone in the U.S. could fax in a utility bill from my old address and that would be sufficent. And he assured me that this would all be over soon and I would regain access to my ebay account. I told him I didn't get any more bills at my old address. Would any peice of mail be ok? He checked his file and said it would. What if my mom sells the house? Fine as long as I don't get shut out of my account again (because then I'd really be out of luck since I don't know why I'd recieve any mail at wherever she moves to.) If I verify that my address is in the U.S. will I get shut out of my account again for being in Romania? - Now I can't even remember if Randall answered that one, but I think he seemed to think it would be fine.

Abruptly, I felt, he asked before we end this conversation can I help you with anything else?
I typed, Yes. Do you know if it's possible for me to buy anything over ebay since I just assumed you wouldn't accept a credit card from a Romanian ISP address. Is that true?

I can't help you with that this is the anti-fraud department. you'll have to contact half.com directly.

So more surfing of unhelpful Help pages in my future. The point I'm trying to make is that these companies don't seem to be set up to help real people in real situations. They seem prepared for crime and that's it. They can't comprehend when you're in a Not Crime situation that doesn't jive with their script. For the same reason I can't reach my credit card company with a question because the Call Collect outside the U.S. number doesn't work from my cell phone and guess what - Not even Romanians know how to use a Romanian pay phone! The same reason my debit card isn't accepted by the Obama campaign because my scary 25 dollars is coming from an internet connection outside the U.S.

I know these restrictions are set up to protect me from something, but sometimes they hurt more than they help. Anyway, I managed to keep the same password on my hotmail account for almost seven years with no problem. But you'll never guess my new password.