Some users still using Hotmail etc and unable to post on the forum

[exxos]

Bad luck! You could always read this PDF which will list dozens of other branching hoop chains for you to jump through whilst we continue to not give a ***k.

I feel your pain......

[mrbombermillzy]

User error?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mi ... erbird-202

Come on Alex, read the room here!

Even the alleged 'user error' link you have provided shows the distain Mozilla have in this continued MS 'malpractice':

Mozilla.png (81.33 KiB) Viewed 30290 times

I mean, yes, we can keep jumping through the hoops, or else tut-tut its 'our own fault', but IMHO I think that is wrong/unacceptable.

[alexh]

That comment is over a year old and there have been no changes since August. Things would appear to have stabilised.

Ultimately you can access hotmail / outlook using Mozilla email client.

There is always churn like this when adopting new technologies and authentication is a big deal these days (if you thought this was bad try Playstation kids account permission authentication).

Could/should M$ made it easier for 3rd parties to be ready ahead of the change, yes. But they are adopting what appears to me (at a glance) to be an open industry standard which you'd think 3rd party tools would have already adopted to be ahead of the curve.

[mrbombermillzy]

I dont want to continue to rant here and probably wont post any more about it, but look at the tone of your wording:

(if you thought this was bad try Playstation kids account permission authentication).

The fact that you have written its 'bad' and there is also 'worse' reveals the perhaps subconscious truth. (FWIW, I will avoid using the PS accounts from your recommendation here!)

Yes, It can be resolved with some effort from the end user/3rd party app vendor, so do I tell Exxos/Badwolf/etc, to quit complaining and 'man up' to make the required changes?

Essentially, it *can* be resolved, but why are we subjected to these (more or less constant) changes? It seems to me to be updates for the (unnecessary) sake of maintaining the monopoly, rather than for enhancement of user experience; although the latter is feigned to make the user swallow the bitter pill.

The same thing happens with other gangster corps, (e.g. ebay), which while perhaps tolerable for an individual to swallow, becomes a much bigger issue for a business to deal with.

[exxos]

so do I tell Exxos/Badwolf/etc, to quit complaining and 'man up' to make the required changes?

In case of my specific problem, as people know, I've been fighting it for like three years now with Microsoft. I've jumped through every single hoop and even they cannot explain why I keep getting banned because I have done nothing wrong even according to them... But they keep on banning me just the same... So how do you resolve it... There just becomes a time where you're just endlessly guessing and just think what's the point...

So for me personally, I'm just another victim of the "corporate monster machine" , What I can actually realistically do now is precisely zero to resolve these problems ,other than just simply abandoning Microsoft accounts altogether, which is exactly what I am forced to do...

No doubt there's going to be annoyed users on the forum against me for this, but I did not generate this problem, Microsoft did, I am just dealing with the consequences of it all the best way I can with minimal disruption... But I am also dealing with several other angles of the same problem as well which then fans out into other problems again... I'm only one person at the end of the day...

Ordinarily jumping through hoops, fine, things change and improve, that's just life, but when you don't even know where the hopes are to jump through because they won't tell you.... You are just fighting a losing battle... I've been down this road many many many times and I'm just not doing it any more.

Essentially, it *can* be resolved, but why are we subjected to these (more or less constant) changes? It seems to me to be updates for the (unnecessary) sake of maintaining the monopoly, rather than for enhancement of user experience; although the latter is feigned to make the user swallow the bitter pill.

The three-year battle of trying to resolve it is absolutely more than most sane people would do already.. Maybe I am completely missing something abundantly obvious but nobody knows what.... Not even Microsoft... So if Microsoft can't fix it what chance do I have ?

These corporations, when doing such changes, should do better impact investigations into consequences of their actions... But again they don't care about the little guys , or that a few million people may be unfairly affected.. They don't care if they/we are pushed off the board... Sad times we live in really...

The same thing happens with other gangster corps, (e.g. ebay), which while perhaps tolerable for an individual to swallow, becomes a much bigger issue for a business to deal with.

Indeed, banned from eBay, banned from PayPal, banned from Google.. Banned from Microsoft... And the new Battle of Lloyds bank they keep suspending my bank accounts.... Mix in the yearly Battle of me changing PCB supplier... Just too many battles are not enough years in ones life to fight everything. Sometimes it's better just to walk away. People have seriously better things to do than screw around against badly run companies like this all the time...

Similarly when I had Facebook login on the forum, they changed something and broke it from working, I was just left endless guessing trying to frantically figure out what the problem was and is Randomly changing settings until it worked again.. Later I decided I would just ditch Facebook logins altogether because it just adds another layer of something else to go wrong where there would be precisely zero hope of getting any help in fixing it.

Similar problems with Apache as well, while they fixed one problem they never fixed or could suggest anything to fix the HTTP2 problems, so I was just forced to ditch Apache and go with nginx... a lot of work... But I did not really have much option there...

Similar with Canonica live updates, they keep crashing the server, why ? Who the hell knows they wrote the stuff! Opened up a support ticket and three months later getting absolutely nowhere. My solution was just to turn this thing off because again what else could I do...

Similar with cloudflare blocking my home IP address, and them blocking my server access to the stopforumspam service which I had to ditch and find another solution (cleantalk). Fight it out with cloudflare ? no thanks. If something screws up, "i'm done" and walking away, I don't care how many people say how good the stuff is, if it doesn't work for me, I'm leaving / not using it, simple.

Point being, literally any sort of company I deal with I will ultimately run into problems which are just unsolvable.. All this is why I have very little time for anything else these days because I am just constantly fighting battles which I should not have to be fighting in the first place. Always boils down to big companies don't give a crap about the little guys ...

[alexh]

Heheh, two grumpy old men eh?

The conversation reminds me of when my Dad (RIP) was trying to get to grips with Chip & Pin when it became compulsory in 2006.

"What was wrong with the old system? Why do we have to change? Security? I'd rather just sign my name. What was wrong with old machines and carbon paper?"

[exxos]

It's not change itself that's the problem—it's when those changes lead to systems that are fundamentally flawed and beyond repair.

If that makes me a grumpy old man, so be it—I never claimed otherwise, and it's not even my fault.

Really, all anyone wants is to be able to use email. Had I kept those “malfunctioning” Microsoft accounts, I'd have had to charge people for sending postal letters with activation links, simply because there’d be no other way for them to get the link.

And as for which technology is better—who can say? At least with traditional mail, the worst that happens is the letter gets lost. Now imagine if Microsoft ran the postal system: they might start rejecting letters in brown envelopes or impose other absurd rules, causing many letters to never be delivered and effectively cutting off communication for a large number of people. That would be a huge issue.

Right now, I could mail a letter to every Microsoft user on the forum ( hypothetically if I had the names and addresses that is) . Sure, it might arrive slower than email, but the vast majority would likely reach their destination.

Meanwhile, with Microsoft's tight control over email, none of the emails I send to Microsoft users would get through. That's the whole point: while things may seem to be advancing and improving, they're simultaneously becoming more fundamentally broken than the systems they replaced.

[mikro]

At least with traditional mail, the worst that happens is the letter gets lost. Now imagine if Microsoft ran the postal system: they might start rejecting letters in brown envelopes or impose other absurd rules, causing many letters to never be delivered and effectively cutting off communication for a large number of people. That would be a huge issue.

Another huge issue would be if your postman got caught on his way to deliver your letters (man in the middle attach, haha), changed all your letters in a criminal's favour and you would have no way to tell that this has happened.

[exxos]

That’s a fair point about the man-in-the-middle attack, but here’s the thing, email systems already have robust security protocols like TLS encryption, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to prevent exactly that. The irony is that even when everything is configured correctly, Microsoft can still arbitrarily reject emails for reasons that have nothing to do with security. So the problem isn’t the potential for tampering, it’s the system itself being fundamentally broken.

In the physical world, if my postman were intercepted and my letters tampered with, there’s typically some form of accountability. The letter doesn’t just disappear without a trace or get silently rejected without me knowing why. With email, that’s exactly what happens: legitimate messages vanish into the void with no meaningful feedback.

Security is important, sure, but what good is it if the system punishes legitimate users more than it deters attackers? It’s like having an ultra-secure vault, but locking out the people who actually need access to their valuables. If Microsoft is rejecting emails from verified and properly-configured servers, it’s not a security win, it’s a failure in the system design.

And let’s be honest, the “man-in-the-middle” scenario isn’t the everyday problem here. The real issue is legitimate communication being needlessly blocked under the guise of protection, effectively breaking a system that’s supposed to make communication easier, not harder.

[Higgy2]

I am sort of back, in a new iteration

Tried changing to using my work email, but I guess they have some block, so nothing came through from when I changed it before the weekend.
Then in a catch 22, locked out of old account and I could not find any contact details for Admin/Exxos without registering.

So setup another email account to register back here.

Now just need to ask for my Higgy2 email to be linked to my Higgy original account, then close Higgy2.