Virtue has its rewards

[redbird]

I was poking around on the list of open support questions this morning, and got to someone who wanted to know why she'd been sent a password reminder. No, LJ doesn't do that automatically.

The asker included the IP address given in the email as having made the request. Okay, let's see what this leads to, if anything.

The easiest way to do that is to log in to the Panix shell, and do an nslookup. Quick and easy.

Logging in to the Panix shell gets me the Panix message of the day (of course). At the moment, the motd is a notice that tomorrow's Panix picnic, which I was thinking of going to, has been cancelled (with pointers to more info; it turns out that there's a Panixian funeral at the same time). I probably wouldn't have bothered with panix.motd.social before heading out unless the weather looked iffy, which would have left a very confused Redbird alone behind Cleopatra's Needle.

As is, I learned something useful for myself, and the questioner, I hope, will find out what she needed to know.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

So, what's the point of someone trying to get my LiveJournal userID and password? All they can do is post in my name; it's not like they can commit any useful amount of fraud.

B

[redbird]

I have no idea; maybe someone wants to mess up her personal life. (I can see more possibilities on the pranks<--->revenge axis than on anything that would involve financial gain.)

it's a mystery

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's actually pointless, but the perpetrators don't realize it?

I guess it would have a point if what one wanted was access to an individual's LiveJournal, perhaps to find out what the author was writing about one.