I feel foolish. I moved the modem to my communications closet so that it would be more difficult for Mom to accidentally turn it off in preparation for a storm, but forgot that I had changed my email password. On my first try I failed to get a DSL signal when running it through a surge protector, so I ended up running it only with an extension. I was confused because the modem’s tests all passed, and both the connection and DSL were listed as up. I could ping whatever I wanted to, although AT&T was redirecting all my traffic to some strange password mismatch page, and traceroutes timed out. (Why not “incorrect?” “Mismatch” confused me into thinking it was set to my mom’s email and my password or something.) I was too worked up over the fact that they were hijacking my traffic to take into account the possibility that AT&T was correct that the password was wrong. I feel bad for wasting their time, but on another note I think that assuring customers that a password utility that requires an executable download is legitimate simply because they continue being redirected to it is not the best way to go.