[info]greenwitch in [info]07refugees

Deleting old LJ e-mail addresses

Of interest to those who no longer have control of a) the original address on their LJ accounts, b) those who have hotmail addresses associated with their LJ accounts that they no longer control...

It appears that you can now remove those addresses.

FYI, and get on that, folks.

(I had *three* addresses I no longer controlled on there, which are thankfully gone now. Apparently in 2002-2004 I was quite the web-based e-mail whore.)

ETA: It doesn't appear to be available to everyone, and as noted in comments below, this *does* leave open another huge security hole. So, I suppose, if you're able to remove inaccessible e-mail addresses from your account, do it while you can because the change might be rolled back.
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Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 at 07:11 pm | | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Comments


[info]ptyx

Yay, thanks for the info!
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 06:42 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]greenwitch

Apparently the news is slightly old, but it wasn't really publicized (I can see why though -- you'd probably get a lot of illegitimate e-mail deletions if someone has someone else's password and is feeling malicious) but for those of us who have old hotmail addresses on there we no longer had control of? UM, GOOD NEWS YAY.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 06:55 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]haruka

Thanks for that link, I had two addresses there besides my primary one (and one of those had been deleted by Yahoo years ago.)
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 06:43 pm (UTC) | | Reply

[info]blktauna

Doesn't allow me to remove one of mine.

Doesn't matter too much as I'll probably bedeleting that account soon. I don't use it.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 06:44 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]greenwitch

It allowed me to remove my first one -- maybe it's a change that's being rolled out over individual servers or something. I'd keep checking it every week or two (if you care, although if you're not actively using the account I suppose it doesn't matter much.)
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 08:35 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]sherlock

It allowed you to remove the address that you registered the account with?

That is actually very BAD news for anyone who has their accounts hacked into, since that is the only way to rescue it from someone changing passwords on it.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:01 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]greenwitch

Yes, but very GOOD for those of us who created our accounts 7 years ago and who no longer have access to those accounts, and run the risk that a spammer could have re-registered that yahoo or hotmail account.

You can still have multiple addresses associated with your account -- I'm assuming the ultimate password reset will go to the oldest one.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:04 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]sherlock

I wouldn't mind if LJ allowed one to set one of the emails as unremovable after removing the registering account, do you know if that is the case?

Haha, and now you have me creeped out because I went to see if my oldest hotmail email had been reregistered and it has! Disturbing.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:22 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]greenwitch

I wouldn't mind that either, and I have no idea. It should be something you would set up manually with support or something, as should have been removal of old e-mail addresses. But of course, eljay is eljay and eljay is stupid.

Yeah, seriously. I knew mine had been because I sent a test e-mail to it once and the person actually wrote back, LOL (okay, maybe they were dumb but still). But the yahoo address I registered the LJ account with -- no idea what happened to that one, all I know is that I couldn't access it. So I'm very glad to have those taken off my account because they were out of my control, whereas the other methods of accessing my account -- the three e-mail addresses I left on there, secret question, etc. I'm comfortable enough with that.

But oh yes, I will do backups.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:26 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]greenwitch

Also, this may be why that change wasn't publicized (because even if it's good for some of us, it's bad for others.)

Me, I'm just glad those ancient hotmail accounts are gone :/

IF your journal is hacked, I'm assuming you could go through LJ support if you had proof of ownership (i.e. if you had a paid account in the past with billing information attached to it) but honestly, it's still LJ we're talking about -- it's never going to be completely 100% secure. Backups are still the only way to go.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:08 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]foxfirefey

They actually anticipated and made accommodations -- you can only get change your "original" email to something else if you've had that other email verified on your account for a minimum of six months. This makes it much less likely for a hacker to be able to pull that off, though still not impossible.
Posted on Mar. 6th, 2009 10:23 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]sherlock

Thanks for the update! That is a relief :)
Posted on Mar. 6th, 2009 10:52 am (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]blktauna

I'll check here and there. I'm a firm believer in keeping control of accounts that aren't deleted.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 09:03 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply

[info]dkmnow

I take it this doesn't apply to those who no longer have any LJ accounts?

I ask because, with no account, I'm not even allowed to view the link.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 10:07 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]greenwitch

There was no announcement about it -- that link goes directly to account settings, so if you're not logged into an LJ account, no, you wouldn't be able to see it.
Posted on Mar. 5th, 2009 10:14 pm (UTC) | | Parent | Reply