Username change

[brainrape]

hi there i messed up at registration and used my email as username

would it be possible to change the username to "brainrape" if thats appropriate if not just "lauterer"

tia

Patrick

[Zero999]

Yes, you'll get spammed to buggery. Send Dave or Gnif a private message.

The forum software shouldn't allow you to use your email as your username. It'd not difficult to code.

[brainrape]

kk thx ive contacted gnif

[Halcyon]

Done.

[Bryn]

The forum software shouldn't allow you to use your email as your username. It'd not difficult to code.

I've seen a few people with their email addresses as their usernames, and if it's going to be a major security risk as you said, maybe Dave should look into it? (perhaps prohibiting usernames containing "@" would be the first step).

[magic]

There is somebody here called "Bored@Work" or something like that.
I remember when Dave enabled some security thing on this forum which ended up hiding his username to protect him from spam

However, I don't recall anyone having "xxx@yyy.zzz", so perhaps this pattern could be blocked without harm.

[Bryn]

However, I don't recall anyone having "xxx@yyy.zzz", so perhaps this pattern could be blocked without harm.

I've seen a few myself recently though... but yeah, it doesn't occur often.

[magic]

I mean, I don't recall anyone using this kind of username which was not an email address.

Yes, there was a few, but I think most of them did the same as the OP here.

[Ian.M]

Pulling stats from the list returned by searching for members matching @ in only their user name, as of a few minutes ago, there were 349, of which 261 appeared to have an email address^* as their user name, and 186 of those have posted.   There are  83 who use @ in the sense of 'at' or belonging to, or to replace the letter a or just to ornament their user name.   

Getting these stats didn't need any admin access or special skills other than copy/pasting into a local spreadsheet that for privacy reasons has been discarded without saving.

* i.e. without spaces, containing only one  @, with one or more . after the @ and ending in a valid TLD.

[Halcyon]

Perhaps if it's possible to modify the registration form to explain that the username is visible to the public, perhaps people wouldn't make that mistake.