Internet Security

I use a lot of internet forum sites but over the last couple of years I've had quite a few problems with accessing certain sites because I'm in Hungary. If sites are getting spam or virus attacks originating in eastern Europe they are quite likely to impose a blanket ban on our part of the world. You can end up in a catch 22 situation where they ask you to contact the admin. if you experience trouble logging in but you can only contact the admin if you are logged in!
My latest problems are with Photobucket and I don't know for certain that they are related to my current location but I suspect they may be.

I have been using Photobucket for some years now, as a lot of forum sites only allow photos hosted elsewhere. When I joined there was less interest in password security and the email address I had then has changed about four times in the intervening years. I have never given this any thought until recently, when I was having trouble logging in. I could not log in on the desktop computer because it was telling me my password is too short. It is a 5 digit, numerical one, which was acceptable when I registered but no longer allowed. I dare say they sent me an email at some point, asking me to upgrade my password security but it would have gone to the old, defunct Freeserve email address.
I managed to log in using my laptop so I tried to change my password there. It would not allow this, as you have to re-enter the old password, which again got flagged up as being too short. I tried to change the email address but again I got an error message. I applied to Photobucket Support for help and had to fill in a form describing a couple of my photos, give my date of birth etc. The problem with the date of birth is it seems to be on a default date, as it gives it as January 1st 1986. I entered my genuine date of birth in the form so I suppose that flagged me as an imposter. It was probably optional to fill in your date of birth when I first joined and I evidently didn't bother. Basically the support people are accusing me of trying to hack into another users account. The latest thing I tried was uploading an image of a message to the Photobucket team, asking them to let me change from the old to the new email address. That was a few days ago and I've not heard anything. I suspect a lot of older Photobucket accounts are affected by these changes, as the support staff mention in one email that they are unusually busy at the moment.