Skype’s ridiculous password policy
I lost my Skype account today thanks to their unbelievable password policy. When you click on their Forgot your password? link, you get taken to a page that asks you for your user name and the email address that you *originally signed up with*. WTF? I don't even have that domain any more! Furthermore, Skype lets you change your email address in your profile but will not send your password to that email. It's as bad as banks here in the UK thinking that living at a single address for three years makes you more trustworthy or something (it's because we don't have a real credit rating system here.) In any case, I've got a new Skype account now so please ping me if you were on my list and I'll add you on again.
The Skype’s ridiculous password policy article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
Skype: Big thumbs down!
[Update] One of my readers who works at Skype contacted me to help and was able to change the email address I originally signed up with so I could receive the forgotten password email. Thanks, man! 
And I hope that Skype will also review this workflow as I'm sure other people have found themselves in this situation.
[Update 2] Please do not email me to ask if I can help you change your Skype password — unfortunately, I cannot. I've been told by a friend at Skype that such requests should be put through to Skype support. Sorry I cannot be of more help in this.
The Skype’s ridiculous password policy article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
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Ken Simpson
Gabriela Portilla
Clark Wilkins
Bob
Erik Hansen
eric.dolecki
I have run into similar situations in the past when I registered something under my current employer’s domain. When I didn’t work there anymore and needed the password reset, guess where they sent the password? To the email address I no longer had access to, nor probably existed anymore.
Feel your pain, but its not just Skype. Shoot them an email about it - perhaps they will change how it works. Its an edge case, but I am sure it happens more frequently than Skype probably imagined.
August 15th, 2006 at 2:37 pmdr woohoo
the same thing happened to me… with my original 1994(?) AOL account. LOL. i still can’t get back my drwoohoo user name… even with friends on the inside. you’re lucky you have friends in high places.
woohoo!
August 16th, 2006 at 4:56 amdrew
Igor
Lucky of yours that has a friend in there, you have to meet me with him to help in an old account too of skype, because I’ve lost the pass and could create a new one.
August 16th, 2006 at 9:12 pmNathan
Me too! I wish Skype would change their password policy.
I had the same thing happen to me with Hotmail as well.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:24 pmDon Keller
Is your bunny totally reliable ?
Are there similar, more professionla devices ? I am looking for a remote annunciator to alert people of events happening on a website., like when someone uses a reply box like this, it adds a record to a MySQL table, and every minute, a cron based job activates the annunciator if there are any alerts. Make poeple not have to be a slave to emails, or SMS messages - a visual (or audio) thing .
Thank you for any sugestions you might have.
Don Keller
New Orleans LA USA
drkeller@sstar.com
October 9th, 2007 at 9:55 pmhttp://www.strongcontrols.com/
Megaraider
Hello mate…few days ago i tried to log in my skype and it said wrong password or nickaname…and i was like wtf i wrote a mail to skype support and they told me that i didnt purchase from them/my email is deleted like for 1 year/ and i cant retrive the password…can u ask ur friend from skype to help me with it?My skype nickname is serafim_alex /Megaraider….Now im trying to prove skype that im the real owner of the account…Can u ask ur friend to retrieve my password i ll do everything to prove that im the real owner of the account.Its not my fault that it was hacked/highjaked/….
-best wishes Meagaraider.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:34 pmwkosin
can you answer my ask? or not?
October 6th, 2008 at 11:26 amwkosin
I lost my password to my Skype account “wkosin”, now I can’t use the passwordreminder page because I didn’t set up any e-mail. but this account is mine. My e-mail address is wkosin[at]yahoo.com
October 6th, 2008 at 11:29 amwkosin
can you help me?
October 6th, 2008 at 11:34 amAral
Hi everyone, I’ve gotten word from Skype that anyone needing help with their passwords will have to go through Skype support. Sorry! Unfortunately, I cannot help out with Skype password change requests.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pmPaul
I haven’t really got a comment to add to your blog post, except to say the impatience and cheek of some people *wkosin* is unbelievable! Commenting at 11.26am, then chasing up three minutes later, then again five minutes after that! It’s like he thinks you owe him something, Aral!
November 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pmwkosin
hey Paul, that’s not true. I posted a comment and didn’t see it on the page so I thought the comment was lost or something. Aral doesn’t own me anything!
November 24th, 2008 at 2:10 amsalute Aral.
http://rich-niche.info/cookie/img/smilies/happy.gif
nice! [IMG]http://rich-niche.info/cookie/img/smilies/happy.gif[/IMG]
March 17th, 2009 at 1:06 amHow to Get Six Pack Fast
After reading through the article, I just feel that I need more information on the topic. Can you share some resources please?
April 15th, 2009 at 6:48 pmSwan
I feel those who lost their passwords pain
….
April 21st, 2009 at 8:52 amI have forgotten my skype password and in order to get it back I had to ask for changing my password and when I do that it changes my myspace IM/skype instead so I had to delete my myspace account in order to get my skype password changing … make sense???
It seems that it conflicts with myspace for some reason so they send me a link to change that one instead of my own skype account password!
still waiting it to work out for me yet it still does NOT!
peace