Was I being a paranoid douche?...

[Proprioceptive]

So I put our old car on midmobile.com, a local car sales website, and I had everything the way I wanted, but a couple days later I realized I wanted to change a few things. For some reason, it wouldn't let me edit the pictures I wanted to change, so I e-mailed tech support and they replied by e-mail that in order to change the pictures, they needed me to e-mail them the pictures and give them my password...

Seriously? You want me to just give you my password? The one I use for several other websites? Are you kidding me??

So I politely write them back explaining that I am uncomfortable giving out my personal information to some random tech support guy ans ask if there is some other way to post the pictures.

They respond by instructing me to call them at the specified phone number, which I do and they continue to explain that they need my password to access the account. Now, from my understanding, calling up my password from their database should be automatic and I would just need reset or something... I don't know much about web design and management... so I again told them I wouldn't give them my password at which they became agitated and said that if I wanted them to help, they needed the password. At that point I hung up, contacted customer support and had my fee refunded.

Now, was I being an overly paranoid douche bag or was I justified in my thinking?

 

[deadlyapp]

Careful, you might go to jail for 5 years for not giving them the password...

too soon?

 

[nageov3t]

not giving your password over email? fine.
not giving your password over the phone? probably overly paranoid.

hate it when clients won't give us their passwords... it makes a 10 second job take like 3 days.

 

[mjrpes3]

It's possible they have a very weird custom designed back end that was never originally built to do what you want... but it's such a bad practice that I wouldn't do it out of principle.

 

[lxskllr]

Humans should never need to access your password for websites. You may be paranoid, but their software's garbage. It's inappropriate for a (foreign)admin to have access to your pass.

 

[destrekor]

not giving your password over email? fine.
not giving your password over the phone? probably overly paranoid.

hate it when clients won't give us their passwords... it makes a 10 second job take like 3 days.

Well considering most companies constantly say "We will never ask you for your password", it is suspicious when some companies DO ask for the password.

It seems like improperly-constructed system back-ends if a company needs a user's password.
Then again, most of those types of companies kind of have multiple "passwords", specific personal identifiers, i.e. a number of some sort... so that is how the account is accessed instead of the password.

I dunno.

For those companies that legit need the password, the individual could just change the password, give them the new password, then change it back after the issue is handled.

Paranoid? Yes.
But if there is one thing life has taught me, a certain amount of paranoia is justified. I just don't trust people, and I know how some people operate.

I don't let paranoia control me or prevent certain things from happening, I just use a mild amount of paranoia, if you would call it that (I simply package it in with my awesome intuition), as a helpful tool.

 

[KeithTalent]

Is there an option to change the password yourself on the site? Change it to something you don't use elsewhere, then give it to them over the phone, then change it back afterwards. No big whoop.

KT

 

[SandEagle]

why not just change the password and give them the new password?

 

[nerp]

Delete the listing and create a new one?

 

[Proprioceptive]

why not just change the password and give them the new password?

There was no option for this...

Delete the listing and create a new one?

In order to do that, I would need to pay the listing fee again.

 

[skace]

Never give out your password

 

[nageov3t]

Well considering most companies constantly say "We will never ask you for your password", it is suspicious when some companies DO ask for the password.

It seems like improperly-constructed system back-ends if a company needs a user's password.
Then again, most of those types of companies kind of have multiple "passwords", specific personal identifiers, i.e. a number of some sort... so that is how the account is accessed instead of the password.

I dunno.

For those companies that legit need the password, the individual could just change the password, give them the new password, then change it back after the issue is handled.

Paranoid? Yes.
But if there is one thing life has taught me, a certain amount of paranoia is justified. I just don't trust people, and I know how some people operate.

I don't let paranoia control me or prevent certain things from happening, I just use a mild amount of paranoia, if you would call it that (I simply package it in with my awesome intuition), as a helpful tool.

we can crack/reset server passwords, but it's a method of last resort because it's kind of a pain in the ass and requires downtime. basically something we'd only do in the event of an emergency... if like your website crashes at 3 am and we can't fix it because we don't have an accurate password for your server, that's on you.

that said, we also have something setup for passwords to be encrypted before sent.

 

[gorcorps]

It's not their fault you use the same password for everything... this is all on you OP

 

[JD50]

Not paranoid at all, I'd never give my password out.

 

[angminas]

You know what they say about paranoia. I wouldn't trust an online company that wanted my password either. A hundred million things could be going on, and none of them is "this online company has everything working absolutely perfectly".

I knew someone who spent some time in state-sponsored housing...from some of the stories I heard, I learned that the dishonest people are always going to be ahead of the honest people, because they make stealing their job. In football, the defense can slow the opposing offense, but they can't stop them completely...even the greatest teams give up a lot of points.

It's the same on the internet. You can always give out information, but you can never take it back...and if the wrong person gets the ball, you give up a lot more than six points. Caveat clickor.

 

[FuzzyDunlop]

In order to do that, I would need to pay the listing fee again.

Either too paranoid or too cheap.

 

[angminas]

Either too paranoid or too cheap.

Yeah, a real man throws his money and personal information around with reckless abandon.

 

[ViviTheMage]

just tell them to reset it for you, that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[blackdogdeek]

imo, if they need your password for changes to your part of their site, their software is ass.

i would just ebay the car.

 

[blackdogdeek]

imo, if they need your password for changes to your part of their site, their software is ass.

i would just ebay the car.