Basically that. An alias to add or replace the current username with only on your end, only for the users on your server.
I have nothing against it but I canāt make promises
To be clear though users are not server based. All users, including managed accounts, are stored at plex.tv
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But the users are also stored locally in our database (table accounts), so no reason there couldnāt be a new field added to that table called friendlyName or something. It would be very similar to what Tautulli does where you can ārenameā a user to a friendly name.
And I just confirmed that table is updated as I have at least 3 entries in my database for that table that were updated with todayās date.
Edit: Want to add that I have no issues with the forced username as Iāve always cringed a little seeing someone post and having their email address shown. I also agree though that it would be nice to be able to have a friendly name on our server for the accounts we share with. Like I said, Tautulli gave they option and itās nice being able to put a userās actual name instead of the email address or username just so itās cleaner.
-Shark2k
Nothing against having a username but the implementation here has been messy and confusing. Why not force someone to choose their own username the next time they log in where their email might be exposed? Why did my auto-username end in 69? Why couldnāt I use/claim this forum username of mine in my PMS? Why do I need to see my username under my friendly name in the user switcher?
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What confuses me is that Iāve had a username for 4 years, so how in the hell did I get an email in the first place saying I did t have one?
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Do you have more than one account? look a the ātoā address in the email. The account you are on this forum with did not get changed as far as I can tell.
Most folks never log out of the player apps.
It was random with I think a max of three digits depending on the length of email and sometimes silly associations like that happen. All it was I believe was cut the email in half and add a number. The numbers might have gone sequential, meaning the next account that was processed probably ended in 70
The forum software account is separate from your Plex account. It is updated here when you log into forum from your Plex account via SSO. It is separate because of old forum software we had years ago got hacked (2015) and we donāt keep sign in info on forum itself anymore.
We do let folks manually change it here if they want their forum name to be different but the SSO does not work in reverse in that it cannot change the plex account.
We didnāt think that would be a big deal because the user switcher should only be used in the Plex Home by people you live with. But I will pass that feedback along
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Thanks for the reply. Re. the last one - itās not personally a huge deal for me, but fluffykittenpwner6969 might have a different view. Family members donāt always make their Internet usernames common knowledge.
and herein lies the crux of the issueā¦
Why on earth are our emails (and usernames for that matter) publicly accessible in the first place?!
You are providing a media platform, not a social network, right?
@BigWheel This is the major concern that I have with this implementation. Have our accounts on plex.tv (for your data mining activities), but why do they need to be public?
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I dont get it. Why should we use/have username as login if we can use email (also there is option to not use username for login that makes that username thing even more absurd). Why do we have to have usernames at all if we have emails? Lots of online services use emails as username so why plex cant?
Maybe you can just let us alone and dont bother us with useless usernames and make it maybe optional if someone want to login with username instead of email for some reason.
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Repeating that usernames are publicly visible to all users doesnāt make it any more true.
You might want to read up on Plex privacy policy and preferencesā¦ nobodyās storing what you watch or what media you have in your library.
Donāt get me wrongā¦ this thread starts feeling more like what you expect in a conspiracy theory forum:
- one user posts an interpretation
- the interpretation gets corrected
- more users chime in on the wrong interpretation (#1)
- those messages get corrected too
- more users pick up the previous claims/interpretations (#1, #3) and add their own theories/interpretations
- weāre discussing stuff thatās no longer related to #1 but itās really, really bad and the world is sure to end if nobody stops everybody else
This way we keep producing more rumors, half-truths and worth things.
Not trying to turn a blind eye on serious concerns (which I think have been addressed multiple times in this thread)ā¦ just wondering if those replies have even been considered or if weāre moving towards general outrage (in which case Iāll put all pitchforks and torches away and bring fish).
Edit: Disclaimer ā keep in mind ā ninja = regular user with forum mod roleā¦ so my slightly frustrated post is no position of Plex telling everybody to shut up or discrediting anybodyās concerns 
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@tom80H Not sure I am seeing outrage (yet) and @BigWheel already stated that the usernames are in fact public-facing and publicly discoverable, albeit via a tedious method (nothing that cannot be programmatically automated to produce a list of usernames).
What has not been addressed thus far, is why? Why is there a need to have everyoneās usernames publicly discoverable by anyone with a Plex.tv account, when all Plex servers are running on an internal network?
Regarding the data mining (which is mentioned in the terms/privacy policy), as I said before, I donāt have an issue with anonymised data collection, which is what I agreed to when creating a Plex.tv account and paying for the subscription.
Username for Plex accounts have always been visible on the account switcher screen. After we introduced the full name field, we added that new field to this screen as well.
Like many internet services, Plex accounts have usernames that are unique across all users. That username is visible to any friends you have on Plex and visible to the other managed accounts in your Plex home.
For the last few years, anyone who signed up for a new Plex account had their username set to their email address. Most users never changed it. This meant their email address was visible to all of their friends on Plex.
This does NOT mean that email addresses and usernames are visible to the general public. Itās visible specifically to the people youāve accepted as friends.
As @BigWheel pointed out, the current āAdd Friendā screens allow you to type in a username and email address and will confirm when it exactly matches a Plex username. Other than showing the avatar and confirming that account exists so you can send a friend request, it does not reveal any other information about that user. In order to facilitate the concept of Plex friends at all, we need to be able to allow people to find others.
The recent work to set a username for these accounts without one was done for two reasons:
- We felt that it was better to not have a personās email address as a username thatās visible to other users. Most services that allow users to log in with an email address today donāt show it to others.
- Long term weād like to make the process of friending other Plex users easier. Rather than requiring you to know the exact username of another person, weād like to offer the ability to search for another user and get a list of possible matches. We canāt do that if those search results contain email addresses.
Considering some of the feedback on this thread, it sounds like we should consider an account level setting that prevents you from ever being listed in that future account search feature before it ships. That way you can control whether or not your account is discoverable by others.
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I think that would be great.
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Why are so many people numb to this idea? We donāt want e-mail addresses as usernames flooding the forums which ARE publicly avail for data mining bots and other such nefarious activities. It really is a security and privacy concern for people that donāt know any better.
If you donāt like your username you may change it and if one you like is not avail then you can set your āFull Nameā and it will use that locally on the Plex user switcher instead.
You can also change your username to something different on the forums manually that doesnāt match your Plex account after the fact.
IF any other topic is of concern such as searching for known accounts via āGrant Library Accessā or user signup then I urge you to set up 2FA authentication and own a strong password managed by a password manager such as Bitwarden to stay secure.
I do believe there should be a search opt-out feature for the āGrant Library Accessā if one wishes to. Kind of like Facebook has a user search opt out feature but this will require additional implementation and a legal privacy policy update.
I would really support the idea of an account or server level that prevents being listed
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I suggest that not having username could prevent you from being listed or find by others. Also PLEX is not social network so searching for friends makes no sense. I wonder what is the point of having username for searching online?
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So who can I contact regarding issues with the newly assigned username for my account? I could have sworn I had a username already selected that matches my Forum name. However, I received the notice today that I was assigned a new username, which is randomized based on my email address. So now I have an email address for a login, a separate username also for login, and a different Forum usernameā¦all for Plex, none of it matching. I tried changing my username to match my Forum login today, but it said it was already taken. While not impossibleā¦I still find that unlikely.
Sounds like you might have created a separate user account at some point? Does the e-mail address linked to your regular account match that the e-mail was sent to?
