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Forcing the user name to be the email address is a privacy issue!

  • 10 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Kiki

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I just signed up with my email address and noticed that my user name automatically became the local part of the mail address (localpart@domain). The user name cannot be changed.

That's a huge privacy issue because my account is forcibly named after my real name because of my email address. I do not want that to be public! I don't understand why this decision was made by Mozilla, when the first thing you see on firefox.com is the slogen: "And start getting the respect you deserve with our family of privacy-first products."

I know that I can change the display name, but you can still see my real name in the profile URL and on my profile page itself.

I just signed up with my email address and noticed that my user name automatically became the local part of the mail address (localpart@domain). The user name cannot be changed. That's a huge privacy issue because my account is forcibly named after my real name because of my email address. I do not want that to be public! I don't understand why this decision was made by Mozilla, when the first thing you see on firefox.com is the slogen: "And start getting the respect you deserve with our family of privacy-first products." I know that I can change the display name, but you can still see my real name in the profile URL and on my profile page itself.

Modified by xxx

Chosen solution

Hi xxx,

My name is Kiki, the community manager in SUMO. I can totally understand your concern. I'll bring this topic to the product team so they can consider to at least add an option for the users to change their username. If you're interested to follow up the progress, you can do so follow this issue on github.

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All Replies (10)

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Hello xxx,

Don't worry : when you click on your avatar or display name and then on "View Profile", you're the only one who gets to see those private details.

Everybody else sees them when they view their own profile.

But when you view somebody else's profile, you won't see them - try it and go to my profile .....

(it's totally understandable that you thought that everybody could now see your email address etc.)

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McCoy said

Hello xxx, Don't worry : when you click on your avatar or display name and then on "View Profile", you're the only one who gets to see those private details. Everybody else sees them when they view their own profile. But when you view somebody else's profile, you won't see them - try it and go to my profile ..... (it's totally understandable that you thought that everybody could now see your email address etc.)

I'm not worried about my mail address, I'm worried about the REAL NAME used in my mail address. And you can totally see that.

In your case:

McCoy (McCoy-thereal) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/user/McCoy-thereal

In my case it's firstname.lastname.

Modified by xxx

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xxx said

I'm not worried about my mail address, I'm worried about the REAL NAME used in my mail address. And you can totally see that.
In your case:
McCoy (McCoy-thereal)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/user/ McCoy-thereal
In my case it's firstname.lastname.

I just checked, and it appears that when you created your account, you entered your real name as your username.

When I created my account I entered "McCoy-thereal" as my username, and "McCoy" as my display name.

Only an administrator can change your username, so I will forward this to an administrator and ask them to contact you.

Till then : I don't think that anybody will be interested to find out what "xxx's" real name is, so don't worry ......

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Please stop telling me to not worry, that should not be your concern.

I was not able to choose any user name. It was automatically created from the email addres.

https://imgur.com/a/ROsomd5

Perhaps you could show me where to choose a user name upon signup? Because I don't believe you can actually choose one.

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I have forwarded this thread in an email to an adminstrator and
asked them to contact you.

Please forgive me for trying to reassure you - I'm only a volunteer contributor, a user just like you, trying to help other users in my spare time

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Chosen Solution

Hi xxx,

My name is Kiki, the community manager in SUMO. I can totally understand your concern. I'll bring this topic to the product team so they can consider to at least add an option for the users to change their username. If you're interested to follow up the progress, you can do so follow this issue on github.

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Hi Kiki, thanks for this. When I signed up, I chose the Firefox account and not the SUMO account. Does this issue regard both account types?

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I can confirm that I'm not able to modify my username as well (I made my account in 2013). But I don't know if it has something to do because I've merged my old SUMO account with my FxA when we introduce the integration back then in May.

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xxx said

When I signed up, I chose the Firefox account and not the SUMO account. Does this issue regard both account types?

@ xxx and Kiki :

I was wondering if maybe something went wrong with number 3 in this article (?) :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/access-mozilla-services-firefox-account

Cause (as far as I know) only for a Firefox Sync account goes that one's email address is also the username (which cannot be seen by others ).



@ Kiki :

An administrator should be able to change the username - this has always been the case in the past; has this changed ?

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Hi xxx,

your username should've been changed by now. Let me know if you need any more help.

Thanks!