Not edited.

By now, it's likely that you've heard something about these security-related issues. If not, Wattpad released a brief statement on the matter. Their article can be found at https://support.wattpad.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046241911 ...

The article isn't a lot of help to anyone who has been impacted. Many users on here have found themselves being instructed to reset their passwords. If you're logged out of your account when this happens, then you have to click the 'forgot password' button and enter your email address for more instructions.

For a lot of users I've talked to on and off Wattpad, this came with no warning. I asked Wattpad support about this issue, as it happened to me, and support gave me a brief explanation for the mandatory password changes.

"The reason that you are being prompted to change your password is because we are working on implementing a password policy to enhance the security of our users' passwords. The first stage of this is ensuring that any user logging in from a new device is prompted to change their password. We will be implementing standards in the near future which will require passwords of a certain strength and complexity, including a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers."

This makes sense, but most of my followers seem to be having this issue on a commonly used device. For me, it happened on my phone, which I use to log in and out of Wattpad on a daily basis.

For some lucky users, the issues end when they've punched in their email address and received the instructions for the password reset. That's great, but what about those other guys?

What happens to users who signed up with a different email address, which they no longer have access to?

The simple answer: you're locked out. Users who can't access the email linked to their account are unable to receive the prompt for a password reset. While I know a couple of people who didn't end up in this position, most of the people I've communicated with are stuck in this situation.

What does this mean?

As the people who have emailed me cannot submit support tickets of their own, I again asked Wattpad support for answers.

The response?

"Please ask them to submit a ticket if they haven't already! We have several questions to ask users to verify they own their accounts, and then sending password reset links when they answer them."

If anyone knows how to submit a support ticket without logging into Wattpad, please send help. As far as I know, there's no way to do so without access to a Wattpad account, and if logging into your account is the issue you're facing, then it's impossible to get to the support page.

What does this mean for the nearly thirty people who have contacted me off Wattpad? For now, it likely means they're stuck.

I'm not sure if there's an easy fix for this series of issues, but I can tell that Wattpad was underprepared and should have given users a notice.