Neglect wrote:My biggest issue is the lack thereof in support for recovering forum accounts.
Most of this is down to privacy and protection against hackers and abuse. We can't offer a search functionality to find out which forums account an in-game account is linked to, this would be a breach of player privacy. Even if someone has access to the in-game account it would be unwise to do so. It could be a hacker after all, and we should not help them hack more accounts. Revealing which forums account it belongs to is like saying: hey hacker, try the same password on this forums account and maybe it'll give you a list of 10 more accounts you can hack with the same password. Unfortunately most people still use the same password for everything and with the number of accounts our players have on average, it is not practical for us to force them to use a different password each time.
The reason you are required to know the e-mail address in order to recover the account is to prevent abuse. If this was done purely on username, anyone could spam it with your account name and basically use our e-mail servers to spam your inbox. This is why all account recovery systems you find on the internet require you to enter - at minimum - the e-mail address with which the account was registered. After all you kinda have to know this to do the recovery since you need to know which mailbox to look in.
Most of these recovery systems will not even tell you if what you entered was correct (to prevent people from finding your e-mail by guessing) but to make things a bit more user-friendly ours does tell you that.
If you enter the wrong e-mail:
And if you enter the right one:
Neglect wrote:I have tried to recover this one, but I luckily figured out the password. I have tried many different email providers, and none of them are recognized with the recovery system. Occasionally I get an email back, but most of the time I never get anything. Nor does it tell me it found the account.
It does tell you if the account was found, see above. An e-mail will only be sent if you entered the right username and e-mail address.
According to our logs you have only entered the correct user/email once, for the forums account Neglect, and one recovery e-mail was sent to you. It seems the reason you weren't getting an e-mail most of the time was because the details you entered were wrong. I guess you didn't notice that the webpage was telling you this. The messages do look similar.
Neglect wrote:The email that I sometimes get is the security one, and it rarely occurs.
What security e-mail are you referring to?
Neglect wrote:Both of these accounts were created from the same location. Possibly the same IP, but definitely from the same ISP. So I don't see why I need to prove that I own "Soto" and "Neglect", especially since I have access to both accounts, and I know all the accounts created under the original IP. That should enough proof to at least get the account placed under the right forum account. Plus please remove the extra forum account I created to attempt recovery of my original account. PS message me if you need more info, since this is a public thread.
Because for all we know you could be a hacker.
Think about it. Knowing that two accounts were created from the same location is not confidential information. If you know two accounts belong to the same person then you can make that claim and be right 99% of the time. If I know that both Neglect and Soto belong to you, and I manage to hack Neglect, then I can just say: hey staff, both these accounts were created from the same location and I have access to this one so, surely that's enough to recover Soto too aye? Boom, staff just gave away your other account to the hacker as well
This may seem far-fetched but it happens more often than you would expect. This is why we must treat all account recoveries individually. Having access to one account should not help you recover any others or it would help hackers in the exact same way.
The same thing goes for forum accounts. Your forums account is your safeguard in case of hacks. If your in-game account gets hacked, you can use your forums account to instantly reset the password and take control of the in-game account again. For that reason we cannot give you access to the forums account just because you have access to the in-game account. If we did that then any hacker would immediately take both your in-game and your forums account, taking away your ability to recover automatically and getting a list of your other accounts thrown into the bargain.
Now, as for your recovery. The e-mail address used by Soto is almost identical to the e-mail address you used for Neglect. Everything before the @ is the same, it's just a different e-mail provider. I have sent a recovery e-mail for Soto. Please recover it and post back here, then I will link it to your current forums account.
We do realize our account linking system is rather confusing and not very practical to use. Our apologies for any headaches it may have caused you.
