Jonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
#TechIsShitDispatch
Let's talk about the overflowing wheelbarrow of shit I recently encountered while reinstalling a whole bunch of apps onto my #Android phone after deleting them for privacy reasons before going through customs. Buckle up, it's a wild ride.
#Signal #K9Mail #Slack #2FAS #Okta #Vivaldi #Microsoft #Wise #YubiKey #Synology #Jetpack #Automattic #Wordpress #LinkedIn
1/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
First, Signal. When I attempted to restore my local backup on the phone, it prompted me to choose the folder where the backup was located but wouldn't actually let me choose the folder. All existing folders were invisible, and when I created a new folder it immediately told me I couldn't use it.
My search mojo on StartPage failed to find an explanation or fix for this problem.
2/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
I resorted to Google AI search, and it gave me a bunch of answers which were all confidently wrong. I switched to Free Copilot Chat, and after a number of solutions that didn't work it finally gave me the answer: clear the cache for the "External Storage" system app.
That probably means this was actually an Android bug, not a Signal bug, but then Signal screwed up too.
3/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Signal said I was restoring a backup created by a different Signal account (not true) so if I restored the backup I was going to be booted out of all my groups. I had to log into my Signal account and _then_ restore the backup to avoid this. Not that the app told me this or anything useful like that!
4/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Next, we've got K-9 Mail. I restored a K-9 Mail settings file which I created just a few days ago, right before uninstalling the app, and it just… didn't restore a bunch of settings. I had to go back in and manually restore many user interface settings. Awesome! Not.
5/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Moving on to Slack. I opened the app, entered my email address, and it sent me a magic link to sign in to all of the Slack workspaces associated with that email address. One of them requires 2FA, so when I selected that workspace in the app it popped up a page telling me to enter the 2FA code. I switched to the 2FA app to copy the code, and switched back to the Slack app… and the prompt was gone.
6/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
OK, I said to myself, I guess I need to copy the 2FA code before tapping on the workspace in the Slack app. Dumb, but doable. So I went and copied the 2FA code, then tapped the magic sign-in link in my email again, and when I landed back in the Slack app, that workspace just wasn't listed any longer.
7/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
So, I had to: (1) start over and generate a new magic sign-in link; (2) wait for the email with that link to show up in my inbox; (3) go to my authenticator app and copy the 2FA code for the workspace; (4) really quick go to my email, tap the magic sign-in link, tap the workspace that requires the 2FA code, and paste and submit it.
8/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Oh, that reminds me, although the 2FAS app successfully restored all of my 2FA codes from my backup in Google Drive, it didn't restore their sort order, so I had to rearrange all of them by hand to put them back in the order they were in before I uninstalled and reinstalled the app.
Also, the backup apparently doesn't include connections to the browser extension, so I had to reconnect like six or seven devices.
Awesome, no notes.
9/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Moving on to Okta Verify, I reinstalled Okta Verify and then tried to add re-add my company's org account to it. I failed to authenticate in three different ways before I finally was able to do it using a QR code from another device, and even that failed the first time. And after all that it said there was a DNS issue preventing the app from working properly. 🤷
10/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 47
Next up, Vivaldi. I attempted to enable sync by logging into my Vivaldi account. After I entered my username and password, it said, "Initializing sync…" and then it just sat there, on that screen, for seferal minutes before I gave up. When I went and checked back later it said it failed because of an "invalid refresh token state," so I suspect the airplane wifi am on is so slow that something timed out downloading my data. Vivaldi should be able to handle slow wifi.
11/24
Jun 24 at 6:38pmWeb
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Moving on to Microsoft Authenticator (this is a long one). When I try to log into Microsoft Authenticator, it tells me I need to authenticate first… with Microsoft Authenticator. I tell it I don't have access to Microsoft Authenticator and it says it will send a code to my email, but then instead of sending an authentication code it sends me a password reset code, and when I enter the code it tries to reset my password, which I'm not trying to do here! 🤦
12/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
I try it again and this time Microsoft Authenticator says it's going to send a text to my phone, but it never arrives.
After that I attempt to log in with my password, but after entering my password it says I have to approve the login on my device, which I can't because that's what I'm trying to set up.
Finally I am able to log in with a combination of my password, a text sent to the other phone number on my account, and a code sent to my email.
13/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
But now that I've logged in, there's now way within the Microsoft Authenticator app to tell it to restore from the backup in my Microsoft account. When I try to switch on backups it asks me if I want to replace the backup currently in my account rather than asking if I want to restore from it.
Searching online reveals that I wasn't supposed to log in, I was supposed to notice the "Restore from backup" line in tiny print at the bottom of the login page and tap that instead.
14/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
OK, so I clear the app data and start over. Now I have to log in again. I tell it I want to log in by entering a code from the phone number that just worked a few minutes ago, and it claims it sent the code. The code takes like five minutes to arrive, but finally I am logged in and restored from backup.
Except the two accounts I went through all this for now say I have to reauthenticate to them by scanning a QR code, so all this was for naught. smdh
15/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Multiple times during this I was prompted to authenticate using my NFC security key and it failed dramatically: I held the security key to the back of my phone, my phone buzzed to indicate that it had detected the key, then it told me to keep holding the key there, and that message never went away. In both cases I had to kill the app to get out of the hung authentication. I suspect a network connectivity issue, but what a shitty user experience. I think this one is probably an Android bug.
16/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
While logging into the Wise app, it also decided the best way to ask me to authenticate a phone app login was to send a push notification to the app on my phone. It's absolutely boggles the mind that the developers of these apps don't comprehend that most people don't have two phones so if someone is logging into the app they probably can't receive a push notification in the app so another authentication method should be offered first.
17/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Also, when I chose to authenticate to the Wise app using an authenticator code rather than a push notification, it wouldn't let me paste the authenticator code into the app, I had to memorize it in my 2FA app and then switch back to the Wise app and type it by hand.
18/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
Also, after I entered the 2FA code in the Wise app and tapped the button to submit it, the button went grey and unclickable for a while, and then went back to green and clickable for like five seconds, so I clicked it again and got a "Something went wrong" error, and THEN it finally accepted the code and advanced to the next screen. 🤦
19/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
During all this my phone repeatedly demanded that I add a PIN to my YubiKey and refused to allow me to authenticate with it unless I do that. It had never done this before. I'd been using this YubiKey for years without ever needing to add a PIN. I didn't want to add a PIN. …
20/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
I added a PIN in the moment to try to get things to work, and only discovered after the fact that now I have to enter that PIN every time I use the key and there's no way to remove it without wiping all the FIDO credentials and having to add the key back to all the sites it was already on.
Since then I've spent hours going through everything in my password vault to identify the sites that the YubiKey was on, so I could clean this up and remove the PIN. 😠
21/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
While doing that, I discovered that Synology will let me add a security key to my Synology account as a passkey but won't let me add it as a 2FA device. Using it as a passkey is _less_ secure than using it as a second factor with a password, and yet Synology simply won't allow me to do the letter. What the fuck is it with these people.
22/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
When I tried to log back into my Wordpress blog in the Jetpack app from Automattic, I got a bubble with a truncated error message: "There was an error storing Application password credenti…" This is double shit, first that the app wouldn't let me log in, second that it displayed a truncated error which did nothing to help figure out the problem. I was able to work around it by joining the Jetback beta program in the app store; the beta version of the app doesn't generate this error.
23/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
When I attempted to sign back into the LinkedIn app, after entering my username and password and then entering my Authenticator 2FA code on the next screen, it brought me back to the login screen instead of signing me in, with no explanation for why it did that. I repeated the exact same login process and it worked the second time. 🤷
24/24
Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 472d ago
So there you have it, all the shit that hit the fan when I was reinstalling and configure a bunch of apps on my phone. None of these problems should have happened. They're all caused by tech companies not caring enough about the quality of their software to make it work well and provide a decent user experience. Computers are supposed to make our lives easier, but we won't realize that promise until the attitudes in tech change and companies start caring about quality.
25/24
#TechIsShitDispatch
Show threadJames Bartlett 16h ago
@jik
Let's not forget that you shouldn't even have to wipe your phone when going through airport security in the first place. We have constitutional rights protecting us against search and seizure without probable cause. Why on earth are we supposed to just accept that our rights don't apply under certain arbitrary circumstances? If they can circumvent our rights at the airport, then they can do so anywhere.
Show threadB Thoreau 🛸2d ago
@jik I want you to know I have done the exact same thing, step by step with the same confusion! I thought it was just me!