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I seem to have 2 accounts, how to merge them?
After 5 years, this is still an issue... It's so easy to check if an e-mail address is already in use in some account and then link this new login with the old account (making a second authentication with the old account). So many sites works this way...
At some point it would be great if Amara understands how annoying this is for the users and fix this, creating some tool for us to merge accounts and to let us to have one account with multiple login methods (Google, Facebook, TED, whatever).
Thank you for bringing this topic back up, Itamar C.
I don't see how users themselves could merge two accounts that have content in them: they may have been created by the same human, but in software logic, they are two different users. When a human accidentally creates a second account, s/he can create a ticket explaining what happened: tech staff will then merge the accounts.
This being said, maybe there should be a warning in the sign-up / sign-in pages, maybe leading to a resource on how to avoid accidentally creating further accounts, or to a an added section in the existing Signing In resource.
Unwanted new accounts are often generated when a user creates an account via the "I. Select a username and a password." method and uses a gmail address for contact. Then when the user wants to log in again, s/he sees the "Google" button under "II. With your social network account." and believes s/he can also login this way. So s/he inputs the contact gmail address in the "Google" form. And the system does not find a "Sign in via Google" account for that address, so it prompts the user to create one. The user does not realize s/he has been transferred in the sign up process and unwittingly creates a second account.
I'm not sure how the warning should be worded, though, because I'm strongly biased against using the login of one service for logging into another service. Any suggestion?
Claude, this behavior in the site is usually considered a "bug", a defect if you prefer. Hardly it can be considered a "feature".
If I try to log in using, e-mail/password or Google account or Facebook or whatever, the system should check if there are some account with the e-mail address associated with the information I'm providing and if the authentication method I'm trying to use isn't associated with the existing account the system have two possible procedures:
- just deny access (some websites do this) or
- give the user the opportunity to associate this new authentication method to his existing account.
In the second case, to associate a new authentication method with his old account, the user must sign in in his account with some method previously associated with it.
The system also should give us the opportunity in the configuration of my account to enable and associate as many authentication methods I want with it.
Of course the existing "double accounts" for the same user must be merged by some special procedure. This can be:
- The support staff making this with some internal tool.
- The system can have a tool for the users to merge two accounts, being authenticated with one of them and performing an authentication in the second one.
Thank you for your further remarks, Itamar C. Actually, tech support staff do merge double accounts when users notify them via a ticket (which can be created in https://support.amara.org/support/tickets/new) - I'm not sure I correctly understand your system tool allowing users to do that themselves, but it sounds like a great idea: if you do create a ticket, maybe you might suggest it to tech staff?
As to "If I try to log in using, e-mail/password or Google account or Facebook or whatever, the system should check if there are some account with the e-mail address associated with the information I'm providing": the system does that in part.
See, in the "II. With your social network account." part of the Signing In KB resource:
"
When you click one of these buttons, the system will prompt you to log on as a Google (or Facebook, Twitter, TED, etc.) user, if you have not yet done so already. Then it will look up in the list of existing user accounts for a record that matches the social network account you have chosen. If a match is found, you will be signed in immediately."
The duplication arises when users created an Amara login via the "I. Select a username and a password." method and then try to sign in via another social network, Google in particular.
Again, if you create a ticket, could you add your suggestion on how to avoid that, please?
Thank you again
Claude
Máté Burján
Somehow at one point I seem to have made a second account and I have no idea why and how. Now I'd like to merge them, because it's a little confusing.
7 people have this problem