Why do websites use “email” and “username” interchangeably as log-in credentials?

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Why do websites use “email” and “username” interchangeably as log-in credentials?

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10 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Why not? An email is just as good as a username, most sites won’t let you sign up for more than one account per email address anyway so it’s pretty much guaranteed to be unique like a user name and your email address is going to be way easier for you to remember than some username that you set up for the specific site you’re trying to access.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Passwords are pretty much defunct, we have entered the world of tokens. A simple website will allow a username and password as a quasi token, with a recovery email one time code as a backup. More security conscious websites won’t allow just a password and will need a “safe” IP address or machine signature or one time code each time.

If you have just a username and password with no recovery options you have to accept you’ll lose your password and this access eventually.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Theoretically it’s a world wide unique value, unlike a local to the system username (where you might have a “Tom” username in every other system in the world). You are the only one with your e-mail address. So the user can use the same identifier that they use everywhere else. While “Tom” might be taken in half of the systems you use.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A username is just something that uniquely identifies a user. It could be a random sequence of numbers, a first initial and last name, or a user-selected name. In some cases, the “username” might actually be a phone number or street address. The one thing that matters is that it is unique.

As long as it is unique and the system can properly associate the user to the username/account, that is all that matters.

Email addresses are unique, and it allows [“[email protected]](mailto:”[email protected])” to be different from “[email protected]”. It also means that there is a built-in recovery email address. So using an email address makes perfect sense.

As a matter of fact, you usually use your email address as your username when logging into your email!

Note that many sites do have usernames that are not email addresses including Reddit. And, there are sites that allow you to have a username that is different than your email, but you can use either to log in.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Email addresses are guaranteed unique, and people are unlikely to forget it and make a new account every time they log in.

It also wouldn’t surprise me that the data is being sold.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There are two main reasons that emails take the place of usernames in many cases

1. People are unlikely to forget their email address because they use it a lot for a variety of things. But a username they created for one website? They may easily forget it. Therefore, using an email is advantageous to ensure people remember it.

2. Most services need your email anyways. So if you can combine the username with the email, you can make things more efficient and have fewer fields.

For some context, email used to be less common. Not everyone had one, but they still might want to make an account with some websites. So people got used to having usernames for websites. But later on when emails became super common, some places still liked calling it a username even when they just end up using your email instead.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They don’t always. Using an email is less secure than using a username. Usually, it’s okay, but it’s a bank or something, you usually go with username.

Anonymous 0 Comments

One reason they’ll list both is because they still support both…for now. Websites that have transitioned to email addresses for new accounts often still need to allow people to login “the old way” because that’s how those accounts are set up and forcing everyone to login and change it is a difficult proposition.

Anonymous 0 Comments

People frequently forget their username. I know, I know! *You* would never! But people do, all the time – to the point where the websites let you recover your username by telling them the email address associated with your account.

That obviously requires them to ensure that email addresses are unique, just like usernames (which they want to do anyway so you don’t create 837 accounts for yourself as JoeBob, JoesephRobert, JBMcFly…. all for [email protected]) and it’s computationally trivial to check for an account under both your username and your email address, so modern sites do exactly that for your convenience: Tell me whichever identifier you remember and I’ll do the rest!

(If you’re asking the *other* question – “Why do some sites use your email address **as** your username?” – it’s mainly because most people have one email address and are very unlikely to forget it. Plus we need your email address anyway to communicate with you, and email addresses are pre-guaranteed to be unique: No race to reserve your preferred username, and if someone says their email is [email protected] and I have an account for that email but they don’t know the password I tell them I will email a password reset link so they can log in again.)

Source: I build a lot of this shit. Please send help. Or alcohol. Or both. Both is good.