Recovering Account Credentials

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jimh
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:25 pm
Location: Michigan, Lower Peninsula
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Recovering Account Credentials

Postby jimh » Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:57 am

I get frequent emails asking for assistance in recovering account credentials. There are only three elements to an account:

--the account user-id

--the account password

--the account email address

All users who know their user-id can recover their own account password (actually reset the password) by selecting the "I forgot my password" option at the log-in page. The forum will send the user information on how to reset their password. The information is sent to the account email address. This works ONLY IF the user has provided an actual email address that the user can actually receive and read email from.

Users who do not know their user-id will need my help. But in order that I can help, the account email address must be known by the user. It is possible to search for a user-id on the basis of the account email address, but, again, this works ONLY IF the user sent an email to me from the account email address. If a user writes to me some other email address and asks for help in recovering credentials, and he used some fake email address to register, his account cannot be located without knowing the email address used to register.

There is no way for me or anyone else to discover a user's password. And there is no way to search for a user based on password.

If a user does not know his user-id and does not know his account email address, there is no way to help the user. Please note that any user who has registered with the forum has been sent an email upon completing the registration that gives the user his user-id. It is a good idea to save those emails, assuming you got one. If you registered with a fake email address you would never have received the confirmation email.