topic Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre in Community Site Feedback

Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

markv — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 16:56:42 GMT

To access the new community I am forced to go to the Community logon and do a password reset.

The password that works for Member Centre and the old community doesn't work with the new community.

So I do the compulsary password reset, feeling quite sure the new password will apply to both the new community and Member Centre.

Nope 😞

Member Centre still wants the old password. Now I have 2 different passwords for different parts of Plusnet whereas I used to have just 1.

That's a poorly-through-out transition to the new forum if I may say so.

I have worked around it buy logging in to Member Centre and changing the password to the same password as the new community but that's not exactly intuitive.

Single Signon please!!

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

Pyrii — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 16:57:47 GMT

The new forum software probably encrypts the password differently so it wouldn't be able to verify your password. Easier just to reset.

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

HarryB — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:00:38 GMT

The password for the forum/member centre were not connected on the previous community site and the new forum is not connected to your plusnet account.

Although we did advise a password reset would be required when the new community launched, I believe it was also mentioned that there was nothing to stop you resetting to what it was on the old community site.

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

Oldjim — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:00:45 GMT

Can I advise

From a security perspective

You should not have been using the same password for the old forums and your main login and similarly you shouldn't be doing it on these forums

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

jab1 — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:02:05 GMT

I know it's no comfort now, but you could have re-used your old password. This question was raised in the 'Changes are coming' thread about the 'new' forum, and Chris (I think), said that would be OK. I did, and had no issue.

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

markv — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:15:31 GMT

Hi HarryB

The branding on Member Centre, Old community and New community all look identical, making it look like one unified platform.

If the forum is, and was, seperate from the main Plusnet site, perhaps that unified branding is somewhat misleading.

I could log on to Member Centre do stuff, then click on Community and seemlessly do stuff there.

Until today, I (incorrectly) though MC and old community shared a password - so many easy ways of technically doing that (e.g. LDAP).

If the community (old or new) is not coupled with the main Plusnet site, perhaps that should be made clear and you should encourage users to treat them as different and have different logons for each.

That's not a huge inconvenience and I would rather have seperation between seperate sites, than a fake integration achieved through having the same password in 2 or more different password databases.

Mark

Re: Why force a password change to different to Member Centre

Townman — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 18:07:21 GMT

In times of old, the old forum userID was the same as your PlusNet user account ID. That in it self was something of a security issue. Protection of access to your user account is provided by a user name and a password.

Using your Plusnet ID as your forum ID discloses 50% of your security credentials to the world. I'm sure you'd not be overly happy about that!

I do rather like your idea about making these sites visually distinct - a break from the corporate house style for the forum site - now there's a revolutionary idea!