Flashes of Panic

We’re getting a little too used to auto-responders in our online life. We’ve got a site that is subscription-based and requires the usual login and password. There isn’t a sophisticated bail-you-out system for e-mailing you your login and password, should you forget them; too many keys you could either forget, or use to dredge up the bit you do need to remember. Or something. Instead, the “Forgot your password?” page instructs you to send an email to a role address which happens to wind up in my mailbox.

Here’s where the fun begins. This is a very generic address; it could be used for people having trouble installing PAUP* or getting virtual memory errors with Sylvius. It reaches a real person—me—who dredges up the correct fix, if I know it, or asks for more information, or whatever other help I can offer. But the folks reaching it from introstats.net are treating it like an autoresponder. Hey, guys, I don’t know where you’re coming from. If I get an email with the subject line, “login and password” and nothing but a name (or, worse, just a registration number) in the body, how am I supposed to know which of our many titles I’m dealing with? Read your mind? (I can usually guess, of course, but that’s not the point.) Even better, how am I supposed to distinguish your message from spam?

In this case, the best solution is to add some text to the page with the email address explaining that context is necessary in the message. I do think people are getting more and more accustomed to computers detecting the context of the information they’re keying in, and responding accordingly, and this is leading to issues when the context is not present.