What happens to Gravatar profile if you change you username?

  • Unknown's avatar
    victorialallana · Member ·

    Hello. I’m considering changing my username for security reasons, but I have some concerns. I understand that this name won’t be available anymore (for me or anyone else). What I would like to clarify before proceding is what happens with the Gravatar profile. I want to be sure that no mention to my previous username would be publicly available. (An example of this would be services such as Steam that will display a message on your profile informing other nicks you went by in the past – and this is not optional). Since public profiles are handled by Gravatar and no information is provided on this particular matter in the support page I would like to understand the implications of going forward with this

    Thank you in advance for your help,
    V

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hello there, this explains how to hide your current Gravatar profile: http://en.gravatar.com/support/profile-privacy/

  • Unknown's avatar
    amavernita · Member ·

    Hello, justjennifer. I’ve have already red that entry, but I doesn’t cover the issue I’m wondering about. It’s not about hiding the profile, but rather what information (or if any) is going to be displayed in Gravatar after a WP username change. Or will I have two different profiles?

    Thank you for your reply.

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Honestly I’m not really sure about that, so I’ve tagged this for Staff input.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    When you change the username you should see an option to either create a new account for the new username, thus keeping both names, or to discard the old username. If you discard the old username no one, including you, will be able to use it again, and all public information associated with it will be removed.

    You can see an example of a deleted username (my wife’s so I’m allowed to share it ;) ) at this link:

    http://en.gravatar.com/profiles/elwicak

    Internally we do keep record of the email address that used to be associated with that username, and the username to which it was changed, but that info is not public and would take a court order for anyone to obtain.

  • Unknown's avatar
    victorialallana · Member ·

    That was really helpful, thank you so much (to both of you).

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    @kokkieh- learned something new today. Thanks.

    @victorialallana you’re very welcome. :)

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Glad I could help :)

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