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What to use for login ID?

We are in the early design stages of a major rewrite of our product. Right now our customers are mostly businesses. We manage accounts. User names for an account are each on their own namespace but it means that we can't move assets between servers.

We want to move to a single namespace. But that brings the problem of unique user names.

So what's the best idea?

  • Email address (w/verification) ?
  • Unique alpha-numeric string ("johnsmith9234")?
  • Should we look at OpenID?
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Mark Renouf Avatar asked Aug 08 '08 15:08

Mark Renouf


People also ask

What should a login ID be?

Your username should be simple enough to remember but hard to guess. Never use easy-to-guess numbers with your usernames (for example, address or date of birth). Don't use your Social Security number or ID number as your username. If you're struggling, try an online username generator.

What is an example of a login ID?

Since the userid identifies you to the computer, it is natural for it to be used to identify you to other computer systems. For example: The person Joe B. User could have this userid, "jbu3470". The userid is made up of the person's initials and the digits of some personal identification number.


1 Answers

EMAIL ADDRESS

Rational

  1. Users don't change emails very often
  2. Removes the step of asking for username and email address, which you'll need anyway
  3. Users don't often forget their email address (see number one)
  4. Email will be unique unless the user already registered for the site, in which case forward them to a forgot your password screen
  5. Almost everyone is using email as the primary login for access to a website, this means the rate of adoption shouldn't be affected by the fact that you're asking for an email address

Update

After registration, be sure to ask the user to create some kind of username, don't litter a public site with their email address! Also, another benefit of using an email address as a login: you won't need any other information (like password / password confirm), just send them a temp password through the mail, or forgo passwords altogether and send them a one-use URL to their email address every time they'd like to login (see: mugshot.org)

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Jake McGraw Avatar answered Nov 10 '22 11:11

Jake McGraw