I can sign in to OGS using either my username and my password, or my email address and my password (the same password). But if I sign in using my email, none of my game records are present. What’s going on? Did I manage to mess up the account creation process? (Although, that was a few months ago.)
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I’m curious about the answer to this anyway. It sounds fairly funky. Is it the same username if you sign in either way? Do the games/game history come and go when you swap between them?
I had an issue where I one logged in on a new computer and couldn’t remember my password so choose the “log in with email” option (I can’t remember exactly how it’s presented on the log in screen). I figured that since OGS knows my email it would sign my in to my account. However it actually just makes a new account if you do that.
Not sure if that might have happened to you?
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I think it’s expected behaviour. Make it insanely easy to set up an account to be able to play Go. You can “register” in the normal way or use Facebook or email address and have account created that way.
I think the problem is not being clear enough exactly what’s happening. I.e. a new account is created. That’s fine for newcomers who don’t already have an account and I can see that making it easy to get an account is good but if you already have an account is unlikely you want another but there is no check to see, for example, that an email is already in use or if the user thinks they have a username already
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I think it should be a bug. Even if it is made very straightforward to create an account, changing the password on one of those accounts shouldn’t change it elsewhere.
I’m not sure I understand about changing passwords.
What I think might have happened is that when you “signed in” using you email address, you in fact created a new account. And so you couldn’t see the games from your other, username, account because that is now a different account. If you sign out and in again with the username account they will all be back again.
If that’s what you did (I don’t know but it’s what I did) then you can just ask a mod to disable the unwanted account.
Sorry if I’ve not explained very clearly.
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Thanks for explaining again. I think you are somewhat right about what happened. It looks like a new account. However, the “email” account and the “username” account have the same password. I can use it to sign into either account. Right now, I am locked out of the “username” account, as I was a little while ago. When I use the “reset password” function on the “username” account, it resets the password on both accounts. This is the behaviour that I think is a bug: resetting the password on one account should not reset it on the other account. This can be fixed by only allowing each email address to be associated with one account.
I think you’re right - I should contact a mod. When I search the site, I get no results for that. How do I do it?
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You created two accounts. They both have the same profile picture but different usernames.
First account (created August last year)
Second account (created 2 days ago)
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If you are logged into one of the accounts, either click on the username and “report” in the menu that pops up or find the other account that you don’t want (hamburger menu, search) and click that username and report from there. You then get a box where you can explain what happened.
And yes it’s daft that the same email address can be associated with several accounts. Or rather that a new account can be created based on an email address already linked to an account. You’d think there’d at least be a check asking “this email is already linked to an account, are you sure you want to create a new account?”
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Hi BHydden, please can you delete the second account?
Unfortunately we can’t delete accounts, but i can anonymise the username, email, and password effectively disabling it for you if you like?
Well, are there any other options? Can I delete the account? If not, please do anonymise it.
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Sadly no accounts can’t be deleted, the options are either I do the things listed above or you do haha, we both can but since you’ve confirmed I’ll go ahead and do that now.
@Ruarl If you are abandonning an account and planning to frequent forums, make sure the account you are keeping is the one logged into forums. It can be a REAL pain in the butt to mess this up (stop laughing @BHydden).
To make sure of this, log out of forums and then reopen forums from the main OGS page while logged into the account you intend to keep using.
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It’s too late 
other account is already inaccessible… but Ruarl is the account he is using in forums currently and that is the account I left open
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Thanks for sorting that out, BHydden.
I was able to post as “Ruarl” whilst logged in as “andrew.gibb”, which is even more mysterious.
I do hope these bugs get sorted out. I don’t like the idea that anyone can cause me to temporarily lose access to my account at any time just by entering my email address on the sign-in page.
Nobody can cause you to lose access to your account. If a password reset is requested it sends an e-mail to the associated address, but does not actually reset your original password unless you enter the new one. Without access to your actual mailbox nobody can cause you to lose access.
Yeah, for all intents and purposes forums and OGS game page are two separate services (as forums run on a third party software caused discourse). And forums remember your previous login, yes it can get confusing when changing accounts on OGS :D.
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This isn’t quite true. Since I accidentally set up this duplicate account, I needed to change the password on my original account. As noted above, when I change the password for one account, it changes for the other one too. About 24 hours after that happens, my original account loses access again (incorrect password error), and I must reset the password again. So it seems that simply the existence of the account with the matching email address causes me to lose access to my account, if I ever request a password reset, and this loops every day. Hopefully I have correctly diagnosed the cause, and I won’t need to reset my password again tomorrow. Otherwise there will be more digging to do.
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There is still a problem. The password on my account “Ruarl” is being reset/invalidated every few hours. Here’s what happens: I hit the “forgotten password” link on the sign-in pop up. I receive a new password. I immediately change that password to something secure. A few hours later, when I try to log in, I find that the new password is no longer valid. Go back to step 1.
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