Chapter 3 of 6 / I cannot get in
My password is refused
You are sure it is right. The site disagrees. Before anything else on this page, there is one check that has to happen before your next attempt rather than after it.
Do this before trying again
A login form that refuses correct credentials is exactly what a copied page looks like once it has taken them. Compare the address against your saved copy now, because every further attempt hands the same password over again.
What it usually turns out to be
| Cause | How often | What settles it |
|---|---|---|
| The username, not the password | Very common | Check it character by character. People debug the wrong field for an hour |
| A rate limit from earlier attempts | Common | Wait an hour. It looks identical to a refusal |
| A dying circuit | Common | Rebuild it and try once |
| A copied login page | Uncommon and expensive | Compare the address. Do this first, not last |
| The password genuinely being wrong | Less often than you would think | Recovery material, if you saved it |
How to tell which one you have
- It failed on the first attempt of the day. Not a rate limit. Look at the username and the address.
- It worked an hour ago and does not now. Rate limit or circuit. Wait rather than retry.
- It fails at one address and works at another. That address, and worth checking which one you were on.
- Everything about the page felt slightly off. Stop and check the address before anything else.
What not to do
- Do not retry more than three times. Attempts four and five are what causes the lockout people then ask about.
- Do not paste the password into anything to check it. Every tool offering to verify a password is collecting passwords.
- Do not answer a message offering to restore access. That message is on this site as its own page for a reason.
- Do not create a second account to ask about the first. It will not help and it links the two.
If it really is the password
Recovery depends entirely on the material you saved when the account was created, and there is no way around that. If you have it, use it, and change the password to something used nowhere else while you are there. If you do not have it, the account is likely gone, which is unpleasant to read and better than being strung along by somebody who says otherwise.
Whatever the outcome, the useful thing to take from it is that a balance sitting in an account turns this from an annoyance into a real loss. Holding nothing is what makes a lockout survivable.