A lot of people don’t know any better. Plex is protecting Plex from any further liability.
I thought I seen somewhere the username is derived from the left side of the e-mail address so it should be easy to figure out.
Sorry - the fact they can do this is leaving me with a feeling, what else can they or will do in the future.
I’ve been using Plex close to 8 years and not looking to move to Jellyfin,
Already have the VM working and will be moving over to JellyFin.
Sorry I won’t defend their actions.
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This is about our options in the app.
They did nothing to you or me, or our servers.
All they did is modify which field the Plex Media Server application shows by default on the hosting server.
It still displays the email by default. (not all of my Friend accounts have been updated)
It now ‘prefers’ and displays the field they are auto-populating (Username) if it is blank they create something.
PLEX is multinational, and there are some crazy privacy laws out there, especially in Europe.
I just have an issue with the fact that we don’t have an option to select what we see on our own servers.
Even our “Home Users” each have their own individual Plex accounts, with email addresses, and we can change the account settings for those PLEX accounts.
And what they generate is similar to when you create a new email. If the name is in use, they truncate that email address and tack a number on the end.
And since they have boo-koo users the names created are non-intuitive,
Since the names have no email domains, they become easily duplicated in their algorithm, hence the digits appended and the amount of email address retained.
They just need to add an option to what we see displayed in our servers for our ‘Friend accounts’.
I have to wonder if anyone with influence at PLEX reads this, or if I am just wasting my time participating in this discussion?
Plex has not touched your server(s), they have only modified what the application you are running displays.
Or rather, they have started to populate a field in the user accounts that they would have already shown, had the field not been empty.
What is seen externally for user accounts does not matter to me.
I only care what is displayed in my own servers.
The privacy laws don’t apply to what we see, only what is made visible externally…
We should be able to choose what we see.
geeeeez… what the…
why wouldn’t we all be notified that this was gonna happen like an announcement in the app at least…
just spent hours in a total panic because i thought i’d been hacked (like half the families usernames changed from like robsmith to robs836 etc…
changing the servers password, reinstalling plex, fighting for like an hour editing preferences.xml as i couldnt log in… rebooting my server/computer multiple times, then another 20 minutes figuring out i needed to login with local host to claim the server again ahaha…
all because for zero reason that i can see (as everyone can login with the email as a username) plex went and changed half of their users names to gibberish hahaha…
again a notice, an email or an announcement in plex woulda been nice… and i wouldnt have wasted all night in a panic ahaha…
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this was an ‘announcement’ inside the plex app??
(ie the thing that makes a number/alert appear in the top right telling you there is an ‘announcement’)
i just checked those announcements and don’t see a link to this one/that there was an announcement…
most people with plex never come to this forum… or even know it exists…
and most of the rest of us, not unless we are having a problem (hello samsung audio cutouts that have plagued every server since the one released in October. hahaha… 1.24.5.5173… sadly i do check the forums every day to check that thread, praying someone at plex might have figured out that EVERY SINGLE SAMSUNG tv can’t do plex anymore without the audio going out… and they might want to look into that… alas that thread is 100’s of posts long and has been going on with no answer in sight since december… if your trying to drive traffic to the forums… this way… it’s working! : )
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I got this message in my email, today: “We noticed you haven’t set up a username yet for your Plex account, xxx@xxx.com (created on May 30, 20XX), so we’ve created a unique username for you: xxxx”
When I followed the link to my account, to see what they were talking about, I saw that my Username field was already filled in, as it has been since the beginning. Did I get this message in error or do they plan to overwrite my existing Username with some goofy “unique” substitute? Has anyone had this happen to them, yet?
more likely you might have created another Plex account at some point – either by accident or otherwise forgotten.
Best check if the e-mail this message was sent to is actually the one used for your Plex account (punctuation and all).
Nope, but fair point, and I’ll mention/suggest this for consideration in the future
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Likewise, I am not in favour of being dictated to. Some prior warning might have helped the way I feel about this. As a “lifetime” user I was labouring under the misapprehension that I was actually the customer here.
Uh-mazing. Took me a bit to figure out the password for the “other” (dormant) account, but the e-mail definitely listed an old e-mail address, and I just didn’t notice, because when I used the link provided in the e-mail, it automatically logged me into my “live” account. Now the old one is deleted, and hopefully, all will be well from here on out.
Thanks for the quick (and correct) response.
In Service,
TRCIII
I definitely support this change because my Plex server got hit by someone matching my Forum ID to my Plex account. I changed my Forum references to avoid it in the future and was surprised to see so many people using their email address (and now I know why) so this is a good idea for security.
At the same time it probably should have had a bit more communication or language testing with “regular users” which would have helped avoid some initial apprehensions and confusion. This is probably my only real gripe with Plex - it’s such an insular community that many folks in the community forget they are likely not the majority of users so more announcement options for bigger changes would be very beneficial rather than just release notes and digging through documentation. Even a simple blog\feed post about feature changes and how they work or how to use them would be extremely beneficial. I appreciate how accessible the mods and employees are to answer questions but a bit more customer vs user perspective on information sharing might help avoid the need to engage them so often.
Edit: Looks like “nickname” is in the details but I didn’t see it there originally.
Requiring an account to do anything with your local installation is already asinine, why on earth would you force usernames as well?
I’m half glad I received such a dumb unsolicited email, solid reminder to delete my account and get off this trainwreck.
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I’m sure of is this,
- I don’t share my PLEX account with anyone
- I host my own server locally
- I PAID for my license and you Have no business getting involved in my business!
The ARROGANTLY IGNORANT always assume that it knows best… Arrogant and Ignorant!
@midawe_com_gmail_com Because you posted here today and previously, I can see your email because it is set as your username. Did you want me and the world to know your email? I’m guessing not based on your reply.
Many folks post here without realizing their username is set as their email and don’t think to change it.
This is one of the worst decisions made by Plex in recent memory, and that’s saying something. Most of the changes made are at least somewhat easy to explain to family and friends, but this is just terrible.
The amount of confusion and phishing that will arise from this is hard to even imagine. Nearly everyone I’ve told about Plex has sent me confused messages about this.
My goodness.
What is anti-user is no forenotice, no option to use the names we want “before” forcing a change and having us open out accounts and wonder what the heck happened (After the fact!) I am all for security, just not having something happen without previous notification of the upcoming change.
Edit: One of the things spyware or malware does is change the names of files, etc. and that is what I had suspected first and foremost when I saw the name changes.
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Fixing a gaping security and privacy hole is anti-user?
So you say there was no option to use the name you want “before” forcing a change but I have to disagree with this. You have had the option to set a username this whole time. A multitude of chances to set it from the moment you signed up. So my opinion is this is helping people who don’t know any better.
Everybody has been notified by e-mail if a change was needed and the announcement is pinned at the top of the forum.
People got a username set. This does not change your account in a negative way.
What they need to do and quickly is give us an opt-out to the “Grant Library Access” search option.
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You are incorrect that “everyone” was notified. I received no notification prior to the change. Everything in technology is anti-user, it favors those that provide…
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