Life Lesson: Make sure your language is correct when you enter your password.

So earlier this afternoon I decided that I was going to log on AIM. I open the client, enter my information, and what happens? “Snovymgodom disabled. Incorrect password.” Ok, I probably typed it wrong. I was tired. So I try again, and no luck. At this point I was quite sure that I had somehow gotten hacked. Surprising, since I only started using this operating system recently and I hadn’t been on any particularly “dodgy” sites…

So I proceed to the AIM site and I manage to reset my password for snovymgodom. I had to provide my e-mail address at the time of registration (which was an account on mail.ru that I hardly ever check now), and an answer to a recovery question. But anyway, I got to reset the password.

So I open up AIM, try to log on, and still nothing happens. What? How does my password not work? I just reset it! There must be something wrong with my AIM client.

So I took a breath, and looked around. And then I realized. At the top of the screen it didn’t say USA. It said “Rus”. Yeah, all that time I had been trying to enter my password, I had been entering my password in Russian characters without realizing it.

So my life lesson for today - if you have been trying to enter your password and you think you’ve been hacked, first make sure you’re entering everything in the right language. Or just give yourself a Russian password if you know that you’ll be typing more in Russian than in English.