Change log-in ID for nXtRender site?

[Bill Gilliss]

In the wake of the Adobe break-in, I am updating a lot of passwords, and would like to standardize as much as possible on one log-in ID from site to site. At the moment, I am using about a dozen variants on my name, and can never remember which one to use.

Is it possible to keep my display name as Bill Gilliss (so my fan base will not get confused), but use something else as a log-in ID?

Thanks.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Hmmm.... I though Ning used your email address as your ID.

[Bill Gilliss]

The problem with using an email address as a log-in ID is that it's publicly available, reducing the effort to gain unauthorized access to an account by an order of magnitude, since only the password then needs to be hacked, rather than the (secret) log-in ID and the password. I'm just sayin'...

I've just started reading David Eggers' new novel "The Circle", about a web company that lets you have a single ID and password for everything: banking, commerce, social media, music, news, grades, groceries, etc., etc. Convenient as can be, but problems start to arise when it turns out that they then know everything about you. Very highly recommended.

[Albert D Hart]

I don't believe we make the emails available to the other forum users - only the "name".

Have you been able to discover anyone else's email address?

[Bill Gilliss]

My concern is not that this site publishes my email address (it certainly does not seem to), but that my business email address is Out There: on my business card, on my web site, on the web site of the university where I teach, in professional directories, in posts elsewhere, in correspondence with individuals encountered on the Autodesk forums, and so on. Knowing that, anyone trying to hack my identity at nXtRender would have a good place to start - half the job would be done.

So, while being impersonated on the nXtRender site is not really a matter of concern, it could be the first step toward being impersonated on the American Express site, with much greater consequences. So, I'd like to have the option everywhere of having a login ID like Xpw~~45!  and a password like G%qtw29x.

If sites insist on using an email address as a login ID, maybe the solution is to have an extra, obscure email address that is never actually used for email, just for identification purposes: Xpw~~45!@gmail.com

Someday, someone will figure out a way that this ID/password bottleneck will go away (retinal scans or DNA swabs or something), but for now, it would be great if both of the two key pieces of information that identify me on the web were completely private if I wanted them to be.

[Albert D Hart]

That's what I do - I have a second email address I use for things which don't need to know my main email address. Then when I start getting spam at the second address I am allowed to have bad thoughts about the places where I used it.

To get really carried away, I would just have a different one for everyplace I sign up. (My email provider can fix it so that all unknown emails to [e-mail] come to me - so I could just use a different one every time.) But I don't want to spend that much effort trying to track down spammers.

[Bill Gilliss]

Interesting... I have my own domain and can direct mail the same way. Maybe I'd sign up with your site as [e-mail], with American Express as [e-mail], with Autodesk as [e-mail]. A different unique ID for each site, easy to remember, and easy to tell where any leaks occurred.

[Albert D Hart]

As Roy says, it looks to me like your email address is your login.

You can change it if you want to use a different email address