Bizzare Facts

The 'forgot password?' button, the digital safety net we all rely on, was born out of one man’s frustration with his own forgetfulness. In **1997**, an engineer named **Joshi Garg** was working for Hotmail, one of the earliest and most popular webmail services. Like many users at the time, he constantly found himself locked out of his own account, forcing him to contact customer service for a manual reset—a tedious and time-consuming process.

Frustrated by his repeated lapses of memory and the inefficient system required to remedy them, Garg decided to solve the problem for himself and millions of future users. He pioneered the first automated password reset system, a self-service recovery process that allowed users to gain access to their accounts by correctly answering a personal security question. This innovation transformed a customer service nightmare into a simple, two-click solution.

This simple feature, developed out of personal necessity, became the ubiquitous standard across the entire digital landscape. It's a foundational element of modern cybersecurity and user experience, proving that some of the most essential technological advancements are often created not by grand design, but by fixing an annoying problem the inventor faces every day.