Recently, I noticed that some users have changed their usernames on the discussions forum, which I didn’t realize was possible without help from an admin or moderator.
For example, in this thread: Unity 6.2 (6000.2.2f1) - Flagged the OP’s name was originally Raikast, but it has now been changed to anon31744181.
Does this require admin intervention, or can any user do it? If a username is changed, does that mean the user can re-register afterward using their old username?
I’m also wondering if there’s a purpose beyond removing personally identifiable information. It seems like this could be abused: users could post, change their username, and eventually create multiple accounts under the same name. Over time, this could fill the forum with anonXXXXXX users, while also letting people erase their posting history by re-registering with old usernames.
As someone who regularly answers questions, I often look at a user’s posting history to tailor my responses to their level of understanding and prior knowledge. It also helps me decide whether or not to engage in a conversation based on their previous posts.
Allowing users to change their usernames at will, and then potentially create a new account with the same name, seems like something that could be easily abused, not for privacy, but simply to erase their posting history.
I certainly don’t have that option in Profile Preferences.
The “anon” makes me think this may be a system thing if the user has been banned but the account wasn’t deleted. To ensure that even the username doesn’t contain anything explicit or calls to action, automatically renaming the user seems sound in such cases. It might also happen if the user deletes his account because that won’t delete the user’s posts, otherwise there’d be weird gaping holes in threads.
I don’t think users can delete their accounts. In the second thread, the OP was renamed to kjnjhbghyuj, so these might be different cases.
It’s possible that, because the second user had been registered for less than a day, the system allows a temporary username change after registration. I agree that anon looks like a system generated name, but kjnjhbghyuj clearly isn’t.
If the changes were made by the moderators, that’s normal, but I don’t think users should be able to do that themselves for the reasons mentioned above.
There’s two separate mechanisms at work. Name changing and account deletion requests.
Changing your username is done via your Unity ID settings. Discussions uses SSO via Unity ID and both email address and username are determined by the respective values on the Unity ID side.
The same goes for account deletion requests. Users can trigger account deletion from their Unity ID, which in turn will anonymize their account on Discussions, which is what you see in this instance.
It’s a matter of compliance with laws such as GDPR to offer users the ability to anonymize their data.