Recently I've gotten back into rewatching a series I hold very dear. It's a Youtube Let's Play of Grand Theft Auto V, from a Youtuber-turned-streamer who's outro music I've covered over on my Music Page. As part of this fascination, I wished to play GTA V for myself. So I go to Steam, launch GTA, and get slapped in the face with a dumb decision I made 3 years ago. Back then, I was stupid into "privacy" "online". Two terms that are inherently opposite. So, I used Guerrilla Mail for my Rockstar account email. That wasn't so bad when it started, but eventually the Rockstar launcher will ask you to re-log in.

So I didn't have my email address I signed up with. I literally did not know what it was. I go to Rockstar's Support system. It sucks. The people piloting it are very much robots, not doing much more than sticking to scripts. I wouldn't be surprised if it's mostly handled by AI. I open 3 tickets trying to get my previous Rockstar account unlinked from my Steam account, and am unsuccessful. Seriously though it was like over 4 days. Very angering.

Nonetheless, I decide to think about what I'm doing. I'm on a computer. A Linux computer. Running the Rockstar Launcher through some variant of Wine. So I do the only sensible thing. Dig through the files. I eventually end up at C:\Users\steamuser\Documents\Rockstar Games\Launcher\Profiles\*. Here Rockstar stores information on profiles that have been logged into the Rockstar launcher. Unfortunately for me, all the files here are encrypted or otherwise garbage to try to read, even through a hex dump. So that's bust. But what if I were to read the RAM used by the Launcher.exe process while it's running? Delightfully devilish, Commodorian. So I do. And there's the email address. Clear as day.

Moral of the story: Don't be retarded. If you're gonna play games with an email, make sure it's one you know well.