IDID-3210

Recently I made the mistake of attempting to log in to my Spectrum account. As a conscious human being with not-so-fond memories of Time Warner Cable, I'm aware that using Spectrum for internet is a fool's errand. But I have no choice in the small New England town that I now live in. Thanks, FCC.

As you'd expect, my attempt to log in to my account didn't go well. I entered valid credentials, and the auth portal spit out:

We’re sorry, we’re unable to sign you in. Please try again later. IDID-3210.

Here's how I escaped the horrors of IDID-3210.

1. I use a DNS black hole to block ads. I whitelisted pov.spectrum.net based on some suggestions from Reddit users.
2. I used Safari with NO extensions and an essentially clean browsing history.
3. After 3 login attempts, I got in.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot authenticate from Firefox or even Chromium. Let alone with an ad blocker like uBlock Origin. Based on the massive amount of console errors I see when I try to log in, I would guess that there's some sort of cross-site-scripting faux pas happening in the login portal. And based on my attempts to log in from my phone on my cellular internet connection, I think IDID-3210 somehow blocks auth attempts after a certain number of failures.

It's got nothing to do with special characters present or missing from your password.

It has everything to do with an immensely incompetent megacompany with a stranglehold on internet access in the United States that is so poorly run they literally cannot even code an authentication portal. That's something that even I can do. And I'm not even a software developer any more!

I reiterate: thanks, FCC.