Utility company under fire for resetting Black woman’s account with racist password
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When Erica Conway forgot the password to her utility account, she did like the rest of us would do and clicked the ‘forgot password’ link and waited for an email containing her temporary password so she could log in.
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But instead of random numbers and letters, Conway was shocked when she received an offensive password, reports WSBTV.
“I clicked ‘forgot password’ and got a temporary password from PSE, and it was capital [N-word] and I was quite shocked,” she said.
She added: “It was like an emotional roller coaster. Shock, disbelief, disgusted, angry. … I just can’t believe it.”
Conway, a volunteer of the Seattle chapter of the NAACP, is now demanding answers from Puget Sound Energy in Washington State for the major offense and believes the racial slur was sent to her deliberately.
“I was truly in disbelief because this is not normal, and this is not what a temporary password is supposed to say,” she said.
She asked @PSETalks for a temporary password, she got a racial slur in return. @JJusseroKIRO7 and I have her story and PSE’s response Live at 6p on @KIRO7Seattle and https://t.co/RkwAEtiWXm pic.twitter.com/wdY9liHEkP
— Essex J. Porter (@EssexKIRO7) August 2, 2018
She said when reached out to the utility company to complain, at first they didn’t take it seriously.
“I had said, ‘Do you guys screen out certain words?’ and [the agent] was, like, “Yes, we do.” And I said, ‘Well, you guys didn’t screen out this word.’ The agent allegedly fired back, ‘Why would we?” and I said, ‘What do you mean why would we? This is an offensive word.’ And she stated to me, ‘No one uses that word anymore.’ And I was, like, ‘Where are you living? What planet are you living on?’”
Janet Kim, a PSE spokeswoman replied saying: “This was offensive, there was no question about that. We apologize to this customer, the community, for what has happened, and we are trying to do what we can to make it right.”
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PSE blames the racist slur on a computer-generated mistake.
“These passwords are generated automatically, so they go straight from the system straight to the customers, so it’s not able to be accessed by an employee,” the utility said.
The company also vowed to fix the system so the temporary passwords are a mix of random numbers and letters.
“This is 2018; we’re still dealing with issues like this,” Conway said. “It’s pretty sad. As a society, it’s pretty sad.”
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