@tumblr Hi, Tumblr. My usually very good-natured roommate w…

@tumblr Everybody in our building was forced to move on short notice, because building management wanted to do a gut rehab. While we were away and our computer was in storage, two things happened.

@tumblr 1. My roommate's email provider went out of business. That shouldn't have been a problem, email providers being easy to find, but somebody at your company decided to make it into a problem.

@tumblr 2. During the time we were away in a temporary apartment, somebody at Tumblr decided to force my roommate to update his extremely secure, 20 character + long password. For his own good, of course.

@tumblr We finally get our computer back, out of the boxes. He tries to go into Tumblr to replace his old, dead email address with his new one, and finds out that he can't, because your "security" feature is getting in the way.

@tumblr He still has his password. He can prove that he's the rightful owner of the account. But your system won't let him log in and replace his dead email address with a new one, until he goes into said dead email address to click on a link your system sent him.

@tumblr Let's put down our scripts and use our common sense. How is somebody supposed to go into the inbox for an email account that doesn't exist any more, because the company folded?

@tumblr Should Tumblr not take into account the possibility than an email provider would go out of business?

How many companies have declared bankruptcy in the last year?

@tumblr The roommate opens up a support ticket and explains the whole situation. "Abdul E." replies. All that Abdul is willing to do is read from a script, telling the roommate to ask his email provider for help.

The email provider he had just told Abdul was out of business.

@tumblr Abdul insists that there is no way for the roommate to prove that the account is his. The roommate has already told Abdul that he still has his password, and that the only thing keeping him out is the forced password updating.

@tumblr All that Abdul needs to do to fix the problem is turn off the forced password update, and just let my roommate log into his own account.

Abdul won't budge. Your guy decided that he wanted to be stubborn, unhelpful and unprofessional.

@tumblr Again, please let's use a little common sense: if a security feature like forced password updating is causing users to get locked out of their accounts for life, just how good a feature is it, really?

@tumblr Isn't the whole point of having a security feature to ensure that people won't get locked out of their accounts?

Your forced password update had the same effect as an account hacking. How can you argue that this is an acceptable outcome?

@tumblr Is Tumblr willing to do something to try to fix the problem it chose to cause by forcing a feature on us (forced password updating) that the users didn't want or need?

Or does Tumblr take the position that it doesn't need to care about what it does to its own users?

@tumblr He's a nice guy who deserves better than what "Abdul" just did to him. That matters to me. It should.

Also, I'm a Tumblr user, myself. If this is how Tumblr believes in treating its users, then that's something I'd want to know about.

@tumblr Sounds like a good argument for moving one's content to a different platform, doesn't it?

Do you have anything to say?

Hi, Tumblr. My usually very good-natured roommate was in a seething rage this morning, and you're the reason why. Let me tell you the story of how your employee, "Abdul E.", "made love to the canine" while representing YOUR company.

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