In a devastating story out of Seattle, 26-year-old Stella Robowski thought she would remember the verification code sent to her mobile device in order to login to her gynecologist’s patient portal but ultimately had to look at her phone again.
“It’s still a bit hard to talk about,” admits Stella. “I’m definitely just at the beginning of processing my disappointment, but I can confirm it’s true – I wasted seconds more of my day.”
“When I attempted to pursue a verified logon by having a six-digit verification sent to my cellphone by SMS, I thought for sure I could hold six numbers in my head for literally a couple of seconds,” Stella adds. “But that wasn’t the case. Now, I can’t stop thinking about it.”
The message Stella’s brain couldn’t hang onto? 876334.
“The consecutive numbers, the repeat three,” Stella says. “It should have been easy, but I choked. I started second-guessing myself. Somehow I envisioned the seven being between the threes as insane as that sounds now. Then it all just fell apart.”
The very digits placed together now cast a sinister shadow to all those who know how they figured in this tragedy.
But what happened? How did it all go so very wrong?
“I guess I’ll be asking myself that for a long time,” Stella says. “At this point, I would say it was a combination of hubris and unbearable personal expectations.”
“My fantasy was to glance at the numbers as soon as the text popped up on my phone, then immediately type them into my computer,” she continues. “I imagined I wouldn’t even need to unlock my phone — that a peek at that message preview would seamlessly blend into a secure login experience. Now I only wish I had hoped for less.”
aOnce Stella returned to the verification code and successfully logged on, she reports she was met with some troubling lab results.
“Yeah, turns out I’ve got some bad stuff going on down there,” Stella says. “But as you can imagine, after this code memory debacle, that’s the least of my worries right now.”
Get better (at memorizing six numbers) soon!
