How The Яussians Finally Confiscated My LiveJournal

During my time at LiveJournal I had quite a few unique accounts. In addition to my main "penpusher" account, there were a couple of accounts for an RPG I was a participant in, an account dedicated exclusively to writing, one for posting photographs, one for interviewing LJ users and even a couple of communities, one for TV trivia, another for a group I considered too young to be true Baby Boomers/too old to be Generation X.

But there was even another LJ I had where I would wax philosophical on media for the small screen. I wanted to get access to that journal and I couldn't because the email attached to it was deleted.

I made the mistake of asking the automatons of LJ if there was any way of resetting this and I made the bigger mistake of using my penpusher ID as the contact for the Inquiry. At least I got a confirmation email that they received my query.

I went to check on the status of my request. I attempted to log in as penpusher and it said my account was out of date and needed to be updated. Okay. Great. This is LJ Tech having a laugh. I requested an update sent to my email to reset my penpusher journal, too.

When it never came, I tried again, this time typing my email address into the box. When I sent that, I instantly got a message:

Error

You never used that email address with this account or it was never validated.

What?

The email address was ljpenpusher at gmail! It literally was the email attached to that account for NINETEEN years.

Essentially, I now have no access to ANY LJ I ever created.

Consider this a warning. They could do exactly the same thing to you, assuming you still hold or still care about an LJ account.