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Ask HN: How about having 'lost password' feature in HN?.

4 points by chanux2 ↗ HN
I thought hacker news doesn't need a forgot password option till I lose mine. I accidentally deleted some files on my machine and unfortunately my firefox lost it's memory of my passwords with that. I can't remember the password I used for HN coz I've only used that twice.

The next mistake I did is not using clickpass feature to attach my account with another account.

Anyhow I'd like to be me on HN again. It's uncomfortable having 2 attached at the end of my ID.

And this is not the first time someone lost the password. I've seen a lost password thread where the best answer was to email PG to get the password back. I think this is nearly impossible since PG seem to have loads of mail. (well he is PG :) ). And how he can manage to live with the password recovery requests in his inbox?

So what I suggest is Lost/Forgot password feature. I know it's not pleasant having lost password threads time to time :) .

PS: I hope PG will come across this and will be kind enough to send my password to the email mentioned.

6 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 29.8 ms ] thread
profquail
Post this in the feature requests thread (link at the bottom of the page).

On a side note...you can probably recover the deleted password file from Firefox if it hasn't been too long. If you're on Windows, there's a program called GetDataBack that is very good for recovering deleted files. On Linux/Mac, you'll have to search around for whatever data recovery tool they use.

jacquesm
The feature requests thread is as dead as can be, password recovery is a basic feature that every serious website should have.

To have to hunt around in deleted files is no substitute for this.

tptacek
Hacker News is getting along fine without password recovery, and it's a pretty serious website. It's good to question your assumptions.

This came up before, and my understanding is, people just contact Graham and he resets people's passwords.

rdj
You could assume PG would be too busy to respond to a password reset, much like you could assume a password reset function is a basic necessity of a web site. However, I personally, have proven at-least one of these assumptions wrong.
jacquesm
It is a basic necessity because you can't be expected to be awake 24x7 and HN is operational 24x7.

Yes, sure you can mail PG, but in the long run it has to be done anyway, so why put it off ?

After all, with HN slowly growing there comes a time when the accumulated time used up by manual password resets outweighs the time that it would cost to implement it.

dgallagher
I'd also love to see:

- Search functionality

- Bookmarking of favorite stories to your user account