When I login as anonymous, (well it sounds weird, but logged in with email only in SO, or as a guest)  What causes me to lose that account? (not being able to post something as the user)   closing down the tab that has the Stack Overflow page?
121048
I can use many of the site's features while unregistered. I am looking for a simple explanation of what benefits a user can have from registering.     For more information, see  in the .
48019
When an account is deleted, the username in the user's posts and comments is changed to a generic user&lt;userID&gt;. But the username stays the same on close and delete notifications on posts the user had voted to close / delete1. I think it shouldn't, especially for users who used their real name as their username, if they chose to distance themselves from the site and remove their accounts, it makes sense that they wouldn't really want their name plastered on close and delete notifications.   A perhaps easy way to avoid the actual username remaining visible would be to change it to the generic user&lt;userID&gt; (or anything generic enough, like "anonymous") prior to deletion, and wait a bit for the generic username to propagate all over the site. If I'm not horribly misreading , this was part of the process in the old days.   This could be automated or added as a suggestion to the .  Glaring example can be seen , where the deleted user also posted a comment where their name is properly anonymized:        1 I've seen it on close notifications and self deleted answers. I'm not sure it happens on deleted questions, or deleted answers that aren't self deletions, and I don't have a way to verify it - other than stumbling on them accidentally
20791
I've created account on Server Fault with the "Join this community" button. It seems to be created as I see my picture and a starting 101 reputation on top. But when I tried to upvote I got a message I need to login and where I clicked on a different question it showed me I'm not logged in.    I think it didn't even create my account since later I clicked the signup button again, it asked me with which Google account I want to create it (I've two associated with my Chrome browser).
100122
Looking at my login history (at ) I see I've logged in several times from the IP address "198.252.206.71" but according to a quick whois search, that IP belongs to "Stack Exchange, Inc." I'm imagining it's probably a bug in SE's logging but wondering if it could be a loopback / IP spoofing attack by some bot or...?    Irrelevant info to pre-empt off topic questions:   Because I found my email (again) on  Yes, I had a weak password on here (relatively speaking; it was under 15 chars and used my old pre-salting technique) No, I do not see any unusual activity on my SE account Yes, I changed the password
98147
I can log in to Stack Exchange network sites just fine, even join new ones (like this one), but I can't log in to .   When I try any of the login methods on my Stack Overflow account, it just shows me the "this login is new" screen, even though I already have an account.  When I try logging in with Stack Exchange, then clicking "recover my account" and entering my email (since I don't think I ever added a password, I've always logged in using Google), it just says "no account with that email was found".
38886
My boss has insisted for a while that our login process be divided into two steps on separate pages: on the first page, ask the user's e-mail address. On the second page, either display "user found" and ask for password, or "user not found" and ask for e-mail again.  He insists it is much easier for our users who often forget their credentials or if they even have an account yet. I've long been against this approach because it forces every user to go through two steps every time they login. (I also wonder if it's a security concern, knowing that it will confirm when an email exists in our system.) I would prefer to have a more standard login page with e-mail (all of our usernames are e-mails) and password, and one very clear link for "forgot password?".  Neither of us have any hard data to support our theories, and we have more important things to do than A/B test something that he doesn't think is even a problem. I was just wondering if anyone here could provide some arguments or hard data for or against either approach. I enjoy considering UX design, but I am not an expert.
857
I accidentally posted a question without being logged in. Is there a way to associate that question with my account?   For more information, visit &quot;&quot; in the .   a.k.a. How can you link a registered account to a cookie-based account? a.k.a. How do I merge an unregistered account with a registered account a.k.a. Merging users a.k.a. How do I associate anonymous questions I’ve asked with my registered account? a.k.a. Is there a way to claim an unregistered user? (in case anyone searches with those terms)
117717
Is there a way to delete all stack exchange accounts at the same time?  I also want to remove all traces of my posts on the site. Is that possible?   Will I have to delete all of my posts manually?  Can I use the stack exchange API for this?
7305
When I tried to log out by clicking the logout link at the top (first time for me because I don't really log out of S[OFU] unless I clear my browser's session data), I got the following message:     You're a registered user.      You can log in or out at any time   using the OpenID you've already   associated with your account.   And when I clicked on the parts of the site, it seems that I'm still logged in (see, i'm creating this question after I logged out and this question would probably appear in the list of the questions I asked) and my name is still appearing at the top of the page.  Is this by-design or is this a bug?
76860
I don't want to show my email address in my Stack Overflow profile. I have removed my email address by editing my profile and saving it.  After some time (time is random, sometimes a day, sometimes within couple of hours) my email address is showing up again.  How can I hide my email address?
10462
I recently noticed a new feature, the network profile link, just under the flag weight in my user profile page. It probably seemed like a good idea but I really don't like it. Here's why:  I am very committed to StackOverflow, use my real name for the account, take a professional approach to it and hope to use it as something of a portfolio-light at some point in the future.   Every now and then I venture onto other Stack Exchange sites but I do so with mostly different names for different SE sites. I have posted some questions and answers that I would rather not have connected back to my Stack Overflow account. They've been silly or controversial and have nothing to do with software engineering. I would rather a potential employer not see these posts or even see links to other sites I may be a member of. There are sites where mere membership can be offensive to people. For example: Atheism, Christianity, Skepticism, etc. I really do not want these sites and accounts to be linked back to something that I do take seriously such as SO.   It is also a matter of privacy. I see the network profile and accounts links as something akin to using a particular browser and finding out that the browser is publishing your history for all the world to see. Some might be OK with that but not me. There are SE sites I find interesting and want to participate in from time to time but only anonymously. Had I known that all of my SE accounts would at some point be tied and published together I would have never signed up for many of them.  I would very much like to see a check box when editing my profiles that specifies whether or not my SE accounts should be displayed.  Thank you for your consideration.
111921
Maybe I'm just missing something obvious, but what's up with this syntax? Is it because people sign up with e-mail addresses and use those for logging in, but don't bother giving themselves custom names (or completing their profile in any way)?
102909
If I close (is delete an option ?) my Gmail account, will somebody be able to register using my email address and read my mails?  I want to close my Gmail account but I don't want anybody to impersonate me with my old address.  Same question with Yahoo! Mail. Do they allow addresses to be re-used?
23078
Hello guys,  Whenever i visit a new stack subdomain website, i have to re-register with my google open id. Why not have one login for all sites, that way it wouldn't have to keep re-asking me for my info for a new stack overflow website. Just a suggestion.  Thanks for all the help on all stack subdomains everybody.
92017
I had one account through Google with email X and another account through myopenid.com. I happened to add the same email X to this myopenid.com account. My intention was to stop using the Google account in favor of the new myopenid.com account.   After some time asking and answering questions with my openid.com account I am astonished to find out that it is now merged into my Google account. That creates all kinds of privacy issues. I thought the email on my Stack Overflow account was private. Did I miss anything here?  To be clear, I wanted to preserve my privacy in the second account, but now since all my recent questions were transferred to the old account, my privacy is completely lost.  And it looks like there is no verification for the email field in my profile, so if Stack Overflow is using that info to merge, there is a very serious security bug. If it is merging based on something else, that's even worse. I think your account belongs to that user here. Let me merge it. Terrible!
70644
I registered my Stack Overflow account using the Stack Exchange OpenID provider. I later changed my e-mail, but I cannot change the e-mail address associated with my OpenID for some reason. Why is that, and how do I change it? I logged in to Stack Exchange and it lets me change my password, but never my e-mail.
6792
Why does logging in to Stack Overflow keep me signed in to my Gmail email after logging out and regardless of the Stay signed in checkbox?  Steps to reproduce:   Browse to  and confirm you are logged out Browse to  and confirm you are logged out Click login Click Google Enter Email/Password and confirm Stay signed in is unchecked Click Sign in Click logout (up top) Click Logout (down below) Browse to  and confirm you are still logged in Click Sign out &lt;- Shouldn't clicking Logout on Stack Overflow be doing the same thing as this? Browse to  and confirm you are logged out     Answers are making sense but my frustration is that clicking Logout (twice) on StackOverflow essentially does nothing. If I proceed to click login and Gmail I am immediately authenticated because I still have an active Gmail cookie. In order to effectively logout I need to click Logout twice on Stack Overflow and then manually browse to  and Sign out.