When Life Imitates Art

The Art

So...for the recent Reset Your Password Challenge I entered two pieces - one was an acrostic short story thing (yes it's a thing and if it wasn't, it is now).

In it, the main character sold his old computer to a shady character and then discovered that he was being Spotify stalked when songs appeared on his account that he had never listened to by artists he had never heard of to have even ever listened to.

You can read the story here. That story in itself was in part inspired by this story of real events published on the BBC News website. You can read that story here.

I thought it was quite a funny way to interact with someone. Through their Spotify account. I've heard of couples that share an account, especially those involved in long-term relationships, that then use their Spotify to share music with one another.

The Real-Life Imitation

So...in the strange way that things go...sometimes life imitates art.

In the last week, I received two emails in as many days from Spotify suggesting that there had been a new log-in. At first, I dismissed it, I often get them if I use a different device. The usual. However, I should have paid more attention because I had not logged into Spotify from any other device.

That's when I should have been suspicious. However, I didn't see any problem and nothing was happening on my account...yet.

The thing that made me take note and pay greater attention to this was when one of the emails I got from Spotify was in Spanish.

I am not Spanish.

I initially laughed it off though and just thought it was funny how similar the situation might be to the story I wrote.

It was another day or so later when I noticed some songs appearing on the first page of Spotify, that I didn't l know and then yesterday, Thursday, noticed that there were 5 new playlists I didn't create. Cool Everyday Mix, 100 Top Artist, Best Hits, Relax-HappyTunes, and BEST MUSIC are the newly added playlists. I even hate the stupid names. Especially as they are misleading, to say the least. The music is anything but what they describe. Well, some is relaxing. But it's hardly by top artists and could not be considered best music.

Nothing as sinister in them as the one my MC discovered in my story.

But, it was at that point I reset my password. Obviously.

The music in the playlists was okay. bit drippy, dreary and generic. But, inoffensive. However, as the image for this post shows, I am really not liking the fact that I have something called The Brony Archive on Spotify when I load it up.

The Takeaway?

If it's not already obvious. It may be repeated quite a lot, but as we are all prone to making errors when it comes to our accounts and passwords - reset and change your password regularly, especially if you think someone has access to your account.

One curious thing is though, while I have no idea how they got my Spotify details, the funniest thing is that I don't know why they wanted it.

I don't have a premium account. I just have the ad-heavy, free version...

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Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this story, please click the heart, leave a comment or both. Maybe you've had a similar experience? Share it if you have.

Here is my story again and a few other pieces you may enjoy:

You can also check out the rest of my work here.