From the Editor’s Desk: Online Accounts, a Cautionary Tale (Premium)

We’ve all had those experiences where time seems to speed up or slow down unexpectedly. I’m having such a moment as I write this. It’s Monday morning. On Friday, I was in Puerto Vallarta, getting some work done, packed and ready to fly back to Mexico City after visiting with Richard and his wife for five days, and feeling pretty good about things. And then all hell broke loose, and I’ve spent the intervening three days frantically trying to fix a thorny and unexpected problem that came out of nowhere like a cast iron pan to the face.

That’s the thing. It’s only been three days. But perhaps because of all the stress I experienced in the interim, it feels like Puerto Vallarta was three weeks ago. I feel like I’ve been in Mexico City the whole time. But despite flying here a week ago Saturday from the U.S., we’ve only been here, in Mexico City–checks the calendar–for three full days. In what the calendar tells me is 9 days. My head is spinning.

Here’s what happened.

Friday

Friday morning, I woke up around 7:30 am. This is notable only because I usually get up around 7:00, but the hour time change between Pennsylvania and Mexico (for now, it’s two hours in the middle of the year) means that I was closer than I wanted to be to recording First Ring Daily at 8:00 am (9:00 in PA). So I texted Brad, asking if it was OK to record a half hour later than usual, at 8:30 am Mexico time (9:30 for Brad, and back in PA). It was. And so I was able to read a bit and relax, and then get cleaned up and record the show. Which I did from the balcony of Richard’s suite using my phone and a mini-tripod, as I had all that week.

We finished at 8:45 or so, which I know because I texted Brad afterward with something he had asked about. But you won’t find this episode of First Ring Daily here on the site or on the Thurrott.com YouTube channel. When Brad tried to post it, he encountered an error. And he texted me at 10:23 to tell me that something changed with the YouTube account and he couldn’t get into the Thurrott.com channel. He asked if I could re-add him so he could upload the video.

When my phone pinged with this message, we were getting ready to eat breakfast with Richard and his wife. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but we were leaving midday, and I wanted to spend more time with them. In an odd coincidence, Laurent had messaged me on Slack earlier, at 10:06 am, about a problem with the Thurrott Feed account on X/Twitter. It wasn’t urgent, he said, but we have to accept some new terms of service, and the 2FA on the account was still tied to Brad’s phone for some reason. Given everything going on at that moment, I had decided to punt the X/Twitter issue to Monday–a problem for Future Paul to deal with–but these two things happening back-to-back felt weird.

So I bailed on breakfast and stalked back to the suite. Our bags were still sitting there, packed, inside the door, which was weird to me because we had been instructed to that early so they could be picked up the resort and brought down to whatever area where we’d eventually get a taxi to the airport. But I put that thought aside, opened my laptop, and checked out the YouTube channel. It was still online, good. But when I went to go into the back-end interface, called YouTube Studio, that wasn’t an option. There were two “brand accounts” or channels, or whatever YouTube calls them–Eternal Spring and my personal account, which I don’t use for anything public-facing–but not Thurrott.com.

WTF.

In short, Brad and I were both locked out of the Thurrott.com YouTube channel. I texted him to tell him this, and he guessed that somehow the branded account had been turned off. So it was time to contact YouTube support.

This did not go well.

I wish I had saved the support chat transcript, but I do remember that it opened with the support person asking, “How are you doing today?” and me responding with, “I don’t have time for this. I need my problem fixed.” Like I said, it did not go well. There was a lot of the typical flowchart-based back and forth, which I suffered through. Interminable waiting. They asked if I could send a screenshot showing what I was seeing, despite the fact that I had just described it. Sigh. Yes.

Then they asked if I could sign in with an Incognito window because clearly this was my fault. Sigh. Yes.

More waiting. Consulting with a support technician expert or something. Then they asked if I could make a screen recording of me sign in using an Incognito window.

What. No.

No, I said, I will not do that. A video will not show anything I didn’t just tell you or show you. You–YouTube–made some change. And now I cannot access my YouTube channel. This is a business account. I pay for 6 Google Workspace accounts associated with this business. I don’t care why it broke, I just want to get back in. NOW.

This did not go well.

This person consulted again with the unnamed experts. Nope, I would need to make a screen recording and then “upload it to Google Drive.” I remember that part.

F#$% these people, I thought. But I opened the Snipping Tool, wondering whether knowing how to make a screen recording is even a common skill, and made the freaking video like the supplicant I am.

OK, I asked. Where in Google Drive do I upload this? Is there a URL or whatever? No, I had to upload it to my account, using my storage, share it, and then give them the share URL. Of course.

So I did that. Thank you, the support experts are looking at the video. And … No idea. They had no idea what was wrong. They would get back to me. I could expect an email from them any second now.

YouTube support did not get back to me any second now. They got back to me over three hours later. But I wouldn’t know that until it happened. In the meantime, my wife, Richard, and his wife came back from breakfast. I was in a foul mood. Not just because of YouTube, but breakfast had been my idea, and I had missed it. I had gotten no writing done, which is unacceptable to me, it was almost noon, and we would have to …

Wait.

I looked out toward the door of the suite. Our bags were still there. They were supposed to be picked up two hours earlier. I asked Richard’s wife about this. Thought about how I had wanted to leave the suite at noon to head to the airport. And how this would be a problem: This place has weird rules about people and bags being on different shuttles, and the bags had to be picked up earlier. But were not. She called down to find out what had happened, was told it was busier than usual, sorry, sorry, whatever. Someone would come now to collect the bags.

Here we go.

At this point, I was in kind of a state. A few too many trigger points all happening back-to-back. It was overwhelming. This was not the way I wanted to leave this. We had had a great week. I love these guys. But my mood was getting darker and darker as the minutes ticked by. The doorbell rang. It was a guy coming to get the bags. Not just the bags. Us, too. I guess people and bags can ride on the same shuttle, physics and random resort rules be damned. So my wife and I hurriedly scrounged our remaining loose items into our carry-ons, did a once over in our bedroom and bathroom, hoping to not leave anything behind, said too-quick goodbyes to Richard and his wife, and escaped from the suite like it was the fall of Saigon.

Getting out of this resort required about 15 minutes of teeth rattling riding in a shuttle–read: golf cart–and then a transfer to a taxi. Total time from suite to airport was about 40 minutes. At 12:26 pm, Richard’s wife texted us to see whether we were OK–we were in the taxi by then–and an hour later she sent photos of her feet in front of the white sand of the beach; they were there for one more day. By that point, we were behind security: The airport is tiny despite its name–Aeropuerto Internacional de Puerto Vallarta–and though the line we saw at security was initially disappointing, it moved quickly.

I was still freaking out. I had never stopped freaking out. But once we got inside security, with less than an hour to go before boarding, I needed to eat. This was the normal time for me, plus I had missed breakfast, contributing to my funk. There were no good choices. But there was a KFC, and I love KFC, so what the heck. It was terrible, overcooked, dry, and the thigh I was promised was a white breast even the chicken’s mother couldn’t love, and I got disgusting cold slaw instead of the potatoes and gravy I’d asked for. I threw most of it in the trash. The funk continued.

We got in line when the gate attendants put up the group line signs, and we boarded around 1:45 pm. I was sitting on the plane, quietly dying inside, when a notification popped up on my phone. It was an email from YouTube support.

Thanks for reaching out earlier.

We thank you as well for your patience as we worked on restoring your channel access. Here’s what our specialists have found.

Upon review, it seems there’s an issue with the email [email protected]. Please contact your work or organization administrator to confirm if this email is still active for accessing your channel.

If your channel manager uses the same email domain, please have that checked as well. Once your work admin confirms the emails are active, let us know so we can investigate further.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

All the best, Bella

Hilarious.

I’ve always found the assumption of patience insulting. Indeed, I’ve replied more than once to this opening that patience is not occurring, so there’s no need to thank me.

“There is nothing wrong with my email,” I replied on my phone. “I manage this domain. Also, my other brand manager was locked out of this channel today as well. He has a Gmail account. Please let me access this channel again.”

There was no reply. The plane took off from Puerto Vallarta and then landed in Mexico City about 15 minutes earlier than expected, so about 3:45 pm. Not counting taxiing on either end, we were in the air about an hour. But there was still no reply.

We’ve always had really good luck at the Mexico City airport. (Sorry, Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México, which in this case lives up to its name.) That is, if we’ve flown here 20 times, then 19 of those times there was literally no line in customs and we got through the process really quickly. But this was a domestic flight, so there was no customs room to navigate, and we went from the plane to the street outside the airport even more quickly than usual. So I opened the Uber app and booked a ride to our apartment.

Sorry, that’s not accurate. I tried to book a ride. This went normally at first, the normal experience, but instead of finding a driver, which is usually easy at the airport, it failed. With a weird message. And when I tried again, half the app was gray boxes instead of text and graphics. And as I started to book a ride, there were no prices. Uber warned me about this, but let me try. And …

WTF. What is happening?

I gave up and asked Stephanie to book the Uber. Which she did, easily and normally. And it was at that moment that my funk went to an even darker place. Was I … under attack? Were these things somehow related?

The car arrived. I tried to open the trunk to get our bags in there, but it was held shut with rope. Only in Mexico. The driver untied the rope, loaded the bags, and retied it. I quickly wished I had kept my laptop carry-on. All I could imagine was our luggage flying out the back of this rent-a-wreck, plus the drive was 30 minutes, several minutes longer than usual, and I wanted to check in on YouTube. And Goddammit.

“All is good with the accounts,” I wrote back to YouTube support, following up the previous email since no one had replied to me. And then I sat there in the car, still fuming, watching Mexico City fly by. Hoping the trunk wouldn’t open. We arrived at the apartment. It was 4:30 or so. I still hadn’t really eaten. But I was still so wound up by everything that I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I warned Stephanie that I might want to break out the laptop and see about another support chat. Finally, I decided against it.

“Please fix this,” I wrote YouTube support again. “I need my business YouTube channel to be available again. Please.”

It was the end of the day. On a Friday. And they were ignoring me.

We walked over to our favorite taco bar, not coincidentally called Cafe Tacobar, and had margaritas and, in my case, three of the best tacos I’ve ever had in my life. Seriously, if you go to Mexico City, this is a must. Then we swung through the local supermarket, grabbed some alcohol and other things we needed, and went back to the apartment. We listened to music. My mind was elsewhere. The entire day had passed. I had published nothing, not a thing, which is rare for me. I had written very little–I worked a bit on the .NETpad post I didn’t publish until Sunday while on the plane, but I was too distracted to finish it–which is also rare for me. It was not great.

Saturday

YouTube support got back to me on Saturday. Not first thing. At 2:00 pm local time (3:00 pm ET). It was Bella again. I was starting to put together a psychological profile of the person I imagined.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for getting back to us.

Our specialists have reviewed this and confirmed that the primary owner email, [email protected], is disabled. Please try re-enabling this email and attempt to access your channel again.

Additionally, avoid changing any ownership levels at this time, as it could result in losing full access to the Thurrott.com channel.

Let us know if this works and just reach out if you have any other questions.

All the best, Bella

Huh.

That’s a fun little threat in there.

As noted previously, there were two accounts associated with the Thurrott.com YouTube channel. My account (paul at thurrott.com) and Brad’s personal Gmail account. And that has been the case for almost two years. As you may recall, I separated from BWW Media, my previous employer, two years ago, and Brad changed me to the primary owner. As the primary owner, I added Brad–via his personal Gmail account–as a manager. That lets him upload videos and maybe do other things. Whatever.

That’s important to know because the email address she notes in that message, [email protected], was Brad’s old email address from when we worked together at BWW Media. But Brad left BWW long before I did, he left to join Stardock, where he now works. And while George, the owner of BWW Media, was kind enough to keep our old BWW email accounts around for years, they were long gone. Long gone. So [email protected] does not even exist anymore.

Not that it should matter. As noted, Brad had previously made me the primary owner of the YouTube channel. Two years ago.

“We don’t have access to that Petri account,” I replied to YouTube. “The site is Thurrott.com and he should not be the primary anything. It’s literally my company and my name.”

I was perhaps too hasty there. I should have explained the switchover two years prior as well. Not that it would have mattered. But again, still in funk. Not thinking clearly. I also texted Brad to explain what I was told. And I added, “I may have to ask George if he can temporarily just re-create your old Petri email account so we can do this and then switch it all over. Again.”

Saturday passed without another message from YouTube support. Apparently, this 24/7/365 online thing doesn’t apply to supporting paying customers. I did at least get some writing done–There’s Always Another Update (Premium) and a few other things–getting me over that hump. And then it was Sunday. My YouTube channel had been inaccessible to me for two straight days, over 48 hours.

Sunday

“Brad changed the primary owner email to [email protected] two years ago,” I wrote in the email thread to YouTube support, which, again, had never bothered to write back. “I need access to my channel. I needed this on Friday. A bit of alacrity on your part would be appreciated. I’m a paying Workspace customer with multiple accounts. Please.”

I will guess here that YouTube support did not appreciate this implicit threat. Which was not a threat so much as a reminder that I’m not riding free on YouTube. I pay for this service. And it’s expensive. And they were ignoring me.

Over three hours later, YouTube support did reply. But this time, it wasn’t Bella. It was someone else.

Hi there,

This is Cj stepping in.

I could sense how important it is for you to have your channel back on the email that you’re using. Our internal team is still looking into this for you.

I’ll get back to you with an update as soon as I have more to share with you.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns aside from this.

All the best, Cj

I have several problems with this email.

First, “Cj stepping in” is meaningless to me. Is Cj (not CJ?) higher up in the chain? Someone I should know or recognize? Why even tell me this?

The condescension in this message is borderline pathological. She can see how important it is. The team is looking into it, as if this was happening continuously over 48 hours. She will get back to me, meaning no need to keep emailing us. And then the perfect end-cap. Let me know if there’s anything else she (I assume she, sorry) can do for me.

We’ve all received this at the end of an unsuccessful support session. And I assume anyone still reading this knows, just knows, that I have often replied to this with, “You haven’t done anything to help me so far, so why don’t we just finish up with the first issue before we get to other things you might do for me.”

But I was getting desperate.

I fumed over this for 90 minutes, a rare example of me not just knee-jerking some terrible reply. After I calmed down a bit, I wrote back.

“Thank you,” I wrote. “Last resort, I can try to reach out to the business owner at Petri.com. But as noted, we switched that stuff over long ago. It should be correct.”

I was convinced that whatever happened here is on YouTube. We did make this switch, and not that I needed this, but Brad confirmed as much as we discussed it. Something flipped, and there were multiple times over those three days when I thought, this isn’t just me. They’re going to email me and apologize, sorry, something went wrong, but we fixed it. I kept checking YouTube to see whether my access was quietly back. Also, more ominously, to see that the channel was still online.

I spent much of Sunday working on Eternal Spring stuff, though I did finally publish that .NETpad post. But I also did some work-related housekeeping in keeping with what I wrote in Baby Steps (Premium). And one of the small housekeeping tasks I worked on was going through my email inbox to zero it out. Because it’s late January, I’m starting to get 1099s and other tax-related documents. So I went through those, signing in to accounts as needed and downloading the relevant PDFs.

One of the emails was from PayPal, one of two payment options we accept on Thurrott.com. (The other is Stripe, which we used for credit card billing.) But I couldn’t get into the account. Here we go again, I thought.

I have two PayPal accounts, one personal and one for the site. The personal account is for the money I make from the books. And the work account is, well, a lot more important. Both accounts are protected with 2FA via an authenticator app, of course, but when I tried to sign in to the work account, I received an error message. I would need to undergo additional authentication. But no worries, this was a one-time issue. I wouldn’t need to do this again.

Must be because I’m in Mexico, I thought. I clicked through. PayPal wanted me to scan an ID–my driver’s license or passport–and then scan my face, and send them the scans. Hm. That seemed kind of weird, but whatever. I did so, using the mobile app as instructed. The scans upload, PayPal told me to hold tight. And then PayPal just said no. It couldn’t determine I was really me. Sorry. You’ll need to call us.

F#$%’s sake.

So I called them. I spent 40 minutes on the phone with PayPal that day. And rather than relive that terror with you, I will simply tell you three things. The email I had received was for my personal account, not the work account. I figured that out, not PayPal, despite being escalated twice. And I still haven’t successfully gotten into my work PayPal account, though there is no doubt a 1099 or whatever waiting for me there as well. That, at least, can wait. Yet another problem for Future Paul. God, I resent that guy.

Walking up the street later with my wife, I mentioned that these issues, with YouTube, Twitter–no, I hadn’t forgotten–and now PayPal, were perhaps representative of a seething underlying problem with the online accounts we all use. I wasn’t worried anymore that I was under some form of attack, indeed, I had later called an Uber so we could get to the mall where we get our coffee, and that was OK again. But we’ve all heard horror stories about people losing access to a lifetime of photos because Apple, Google, Microsoft or whatever online account holder just cut them off one day for what seemed like no reason. I was clearly experiencing something like that now.

Tied to this, I have many online accounts that are purely work-related, and I don’t use most of them actively. So every time I do need to access one of these accounts–maybe the company that hosts our site, or the service that auto-posts things across whatever social media accounts, or whatever else–I play this little game where I open their website, click the username box, and see whether my password manager prompts with a sign-in. If it does, great. But if it doesn’t, then I try a Google sign in next. I don’t remember what I use for what. Why would I?

But what if it wasn’t just YouTube? What if Google one day flipped a switch and I couldn’t reach anything associated with paul at thurrott.com? I wouldn’t just be shut out of Workspace. I’d be shut out of work, basically. Google holds the keys to my entire life.

And what if I was hit by a bus and my wife or kids had to figure this out. If I’m not sure how I sign in across what must be hundreds of sites and services, personal and work-related, how could they? This is not something I want to do to others.

Like so much else, that’s problem for Future Paul. But now it’s a formal problem: I created a to-do for myself. I’m going to try to fix this. Document it. Figure it out.

But not today.

Monday

This morning, I woke up in dark, from a dream. The dream was about .NETpad, because I’m mental, and because I had discovered a logic error in my .NETpad after posting about the work I was doing on Sunday. And I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. But in dreaming about this, I thought I had solved the problem. So I looked at my watch. It was 6:00 am. Good: That’s not stupid early. In fact, it’s the normal time I wake up if you factor in the one-hour time change (7:00 am). So I got out of bed, went into the living room, opened the laptop, and figured it would take 5 minutes to make the fix I had literally dreamed up.

It did not. That fix took 90 minutes because my dream was wrong. Whatever. I will write about that one later. The good news is that I did figure it out.

At 7:26 am, I texted George. I love George. I hope everyone remembers him and how wonderful he is. I hate to bother him with this kind of thing. Literally. I wrote:

“Hey. Sorry to bother you with this, but I have a bizarre request.” I then explained the situation, at length, and asked him if there was any way he could reinstate Brad’s Petri.com email account. My message was so long.

“Hey!” he replied immediately. “Absolutely.”

Did I mention how much I love George? Seriously. We need people like this in our lives.

At 7:31 am, I texted Brad to explain that George was going to reinstate his Petri account. In writing this message, two things occurred me. One, that we should just skip First Ring Daily today. And two, that if he was OK with it, it would be easier if I just signed in to his old Petri account. So I messaged him that, and he agreed to both.

As I was writing that message, a notification popped up on the phone. It was George. He had already brought [email protected] back from the dead. Here’s the new password. I know I mentioned how much I love this guy. And I do.

At 7:34 am, I emailed YouTube support yet again, intent on keeping this one-way conversation going. It was almost exactly three days after the access had been silently turned off.

“I reached out to the owner of Petri.com,” I wrote. “He is going to temporarily re-enable [email protected] so we can resolve this. It’s not clear from any of these messages what happens next or what we need to do when that happens. Please advise promptly.”

I know. I’m a dick. But it had been three days. Three. Freaking. Days.

In its fastest turnaround yet, YouTube support replied just 20 minutes later. Clearly, this was the news they wanted to hear.

Hi there,

I hope all is well.

I received word from our internal team that in order for you to access the channel again you must reactivate the primary owner’s email on the channel. It appears that you’re headed in the right direction.

Once the primary owner’s email is activated, what you can do here is transfer the ownership towards your email now.

[instructions]

Afterwards, you should have no problems regarding the channel anymore as the email you’re using will now be the designated primary owner moving forward.

I hope this helps.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions in the meantime.

All the best, Cj

Good ol’ Cj. I’ll be sure to send her a Christmas card this year.

OK, I did omit one important bit above. In the middle of the instructions I redacted, it says, “Tip: You must be added as an owner by another channel owner. After accepting the invite and waiting 7 days, try again from step 1.” So my initial fear was that I’d configure it correctly, but it would take days for me to gain access.

I pushed on.

Using the credentials George had sent, I signed in to [email protected] in a different web browser. I prompted me for a 2FA code. Which would come from an authenticator app.

Ah boy.

There is no way that Brad still has this account set up in an authenticator app. He left Petri years ago. But there was a “Try another method” link. I clicked it. One of the few other options was a phone-based authentication with just two of the numbers displayed. I looked at Brad’s phone number in his contact listing on my phone. They matched.

For perhaps the first time in three days, I was at peace. God-damn. This was going to work.

I texted Brad. Told him he would be getting a 2FA code on his phone. Clicked that option in the web browser on my PC. And in just a few seconds, Brad texted back.

“076299”

Bingo. I was in. My nightmare was over.

I followed the instructions YouTube had sent. And on the Brand accounts page on the Google account management site for this account that had disappeared years ago, there were three brand accounts listed. Petri, Thurrott, and something called Petri and Thurrott. Thurrott was job one. So I clicked that, and saw that Brad ([email protected]) and me were both listed, with Brad (at Petri) as the Primary owner. So I selected the little divot next to my name and choose the option to make me the Primary owner. It was finally happening. (Again. Recall we did this already three years ago.)

It prompted me for a 2FA code.

I paused. That’s curious. But whatever, I could bother Brad again for a code. I looked for the “Try another method” link.

It wasn’t there. There was only one option. This code had to come from the authenticator app that Brad had configured several years ago and no doubt long ago had removed this account from him.

That cloud, that funk, was back. On the verge of success, YouTube–Google, really–was going to f#$% me over. I was sure of it.

“I assume there is no chance in hell that you have this account in your authenticator app?” I texted to Brad.

“Let me see,” he wrote back.

I mean, I already knew the answer. I wrote up front–5200 words ago, Typora tells me, 5200 miserable words ago–that time sometimes seems to speed up or slow down, that we’ve all experienced this. I was experiencing it here. And it was miserable. It only took Brad several seconds to reply. But it felt like hours. He texted back:

“523957”

HOLY CRAP. I selected the authenticator option, the only option, and typed in the code.

It worked. If f$%^ing worked.

I was told to expect an email that I would need to accept to become the Primary owner of my own account. I checked, and it was there. I clicked the link. And I made the change. And I checked YouTube. And it was back, immediately. Not hours later, or days later. It was just back, as if nothing had ever happened.

I wrote Brad back. Thanked him. Told him about the success. And that I would (re)add his personal Gmail account. And make him a manager.

Here, I will just step back for one moment and tell you that I know there is a good chance you’re thinking this is somehow my fault. That I hadn’t, in fact, correctly made this change two years ago. That, surely, I had screwed something up. But I have evidence to the contrary. In fact, there are two things that speak to the truth of my version of this story.

First, when I opened YouTube Studio to (re)add Brad using the correct account, it was already there and configured. You know, because we had done that two years ago. So I texted Brad, telling him this. And he confirmed that he could get in again. “Yep!” he wrote. “I can see it again.”

Second, when I got the email to agree to be the Primary owner of my YouTube channel, it occurred to me that I would have an email like this archived from two years ago. So I looked. And sure enough, I do. It wasn’t two years ago, it was closer to mid-2023. But we did make this change. As I knew we had.

I did a bit of cleanup while I still had temporary access to [email protected]: For example, this account was somehow still the Primary owner of the Petri YouTube channel, too, so I changed that to Russell, who is still there. It was the right thing to do.

And then I went back to the email thread with YouTube support. At the bottom, I found this fun little graphic.

I am going to feedback the hell out of YouTube support. This feedback will include a screenshot from 2023 showing that we had previously made the ownership change. And I will ask who I should bill for all the f#$%ing time they wasted, for the three days I was unable to get into my f#$$ing account.

I accept PayPal and Stripe, YouTube. Your choice.