[Patentpractice] USPTO doing it exactly wrong (was Re: Time to secure your USPTO account)

Thu Sep 25 17:33:32 UTC 2025

And it's worse.  I *did* set up an authenticator app.  When I log into
PatentCenter, it sends the confirmation code to email, not to the
authenticator app.

And I didn't get the scolding email.

I can only do what your instructions tell me to do.  If the PTO's software
doesn't work as advertised, well, I don't have access to your source code.

On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 12:18 PM Carl Oppedahl via Patentpractice <
patentpractice at oppedahl-lists.com> wrote:

> If you want to get some fraction of a group to do something, the correct
> way to do it is to target that fraction.  The absolutely wrong way to do it
> is to carpet-bomb the entirety of the group, cluttering the in-boxes of the
> rest of the group.
>
> I received this email today.  It hammers away at how I must have been
> using email as my two-factor authentication to log in at the USPTO, and
> that I need to set up and use some other form of two-factor authentication.
>
> The problem with this is that *I have never even once in my life used
> email as my two-factor authentication to log in at the USPTO.  *Not even
> once.
>
> There are, I expect, some people to whom the USPTO ought to have sent this
> scolding email.  Probably the way to pick a person to receive this email is
> to pick people who actually did use email as their two-factor
> authentication at least once since the first announcements that the USPTO
> made about this.  Meaning the fraction of USPTO customers that have, within
> the past few months, done this supposedly very bad thing (using email as
> their two-factor authentication).
>
> And then perhaps a week or two later, sending followup emails to the
> smaller fraction of customers who used email again as their two-factor
> authentication despite having been scolded against it in the previous
> scolding email.
>
> The practical result would be that with each succeeding followup, fewer
> and fewer scolding emails would need to be sent.
>
> This targets the scolding at the people who need it (assuming the USPTO is
> correct in its view that email is bad as a way to do two-factor
> authentication).
>
> But the absolute wrong thing to do is to scold the tens or likely hundreds
> of thousands of customers who don't need scolding at the present time.  A
> first example of people who don't need scolding at all is people like me
> who have never even once done the (supposedly) bad thing.  A second
> example of people who don't need scolding now is the tens or likely
> hundreds of thousands of customers *who have already done* what the USPTO
> wanted them to do, namely have already migrated away from email and over to
> some other form of two-factor authentication.
>
> It is like "the boy who cried wolf".  When the USPTO carpet-bombs its
> entire customer base like this, the USPTO virtually ensures that tomorrow
> or next week or next month, some urgent message will get disregarded by the
> customers given that so many previous supposedly urgent messages were
> inappropriate and were not urgent at all for the particular recipient.
>
>
> On 9/25/2025 9:40 AM, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office wrote:
>
> November 1 deadline
>
> Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page
> <https://links-1.govdelivery.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fcontent.govdelivery.com%2Faccounts%2FUSPTO%2Fbulletins%2F3f3dc5f/1/0100019981886f55-4d8fc2a9-2599-4ab5-bf21-2e93fcdfdd87-000000/S9eCucyVpPAu1_4frNYgMu2oRTIYpPMX5G29e9G-LQY=424>
> .
> USPTO Alert
> Strengthen your account security
>
> Effective *November 1*, you can no longer verify your identity using
> email when you log into our systems, including Patent Center, Trademark
> Center, and TEAS. Switch to a safer authentication method
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> soon to avoid login issues and be better protected against phishing and
> other cybersecurity attacks.
>
> If you need assistance, please call the USPTO Contact Center
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