[HN Gopher] Anthropic: You can't change your Claude account emai...
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Anthropic: You can't change your Claude account email address
Author : behnamoh
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-12-20 21:21 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.claude.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.claude.com)
| HPMOR wrote:
| Why is this the case? I don't understand, can somebody explain
| the logic to me here?
| rbtprograms wrote:
| I can only assume there is some database structuring issue
| where things would potentially be broken if emails aren't
| update correctly, but I'm just guessing.
| ares623 wrote:
| Maybe used the email address as a primary key. Ask me how I
| know.
| blitzegg wrote:
| Well it does eliminate a whole list of problems related to
| account takeover, account recovery workflows, legal questions
| regarding which email owns the data, etc. Sometimes less is
| more. Secure, reliable, simple.
| prmph wrote:
| I fail to see how preventing email changes solves the
| issues you listed, or how allowing it necessarily makes
| them worse.
| prmph wrote:
| So with all their billions they could not get a proper
| software engineer to architect their project?
|
| Unless there is some deep technical reason why thing have to
| be this way, which I very much doubt.
|
| And now they can't change it? Where is Claude when you
| him/her
| sixothree wrote:
| They also allow google accounts. I guess they use the email
| for that too?
| Glyptodon wrote:
| That was my first guess TBH. Mostly because it seems like the
| kind of thing scientists writing Python would do.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I know, what's so special about email? The common thing between
| your accounts, that the company that has a lot of chat history
| is allowing you not to change?
| perotid wrote:
| >When creating an account, please make sure you use an email
| you'll have long-term access to.
|
| I'm just guessing, but the above might suggest a potential
| incentive: They would like you to hand over a valuable/longterm
| email, as opposed to a temporary email (for supposedly more
| privacy or testing), by making it difficult to change it later.
|
| 'Dark patterns are the pavement of todays corporate
| infrastructure.'
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| To reduce subscription sharing. It's not complicated.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Maybe they should read that article (that was on HN) from the
| other day and switch to using account numbers with no customer
| information since that'd be about the same difference anyway
| given this behavior.
| FloorEgg wrote:
| It's the same with openai.
|
| I had to switch emails so I had to create a new account.
|
| Seems bonkers.
| blitzar wrote:
| They should vibe code a fix
| jsheard wrote:
| Clearly we need an EmailChange-Verified benchmark since this is
| such a difficult problem.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Do they use Okta or some other 3rd party Auth solution?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Oh, the wonders provided to humanity by "AI"!
|
| Can this be used as a dagger to the heart of all the arguments
| about the revolutionary nature of what we currently call AI?
|
| What a mockery this is.
| wg0 wrote:
| The authentication account should have a permanent stable
| identifier that should be the provider's responsibility to
| change.
|
| Everything else including email and username should be changeable
| (provided there's no conflict with other accounts)
| encoderer wrote:
| Guys remember this kind of stuff when you are building side
| projects. You can just ship you don't need every feature on day
| one.
| rarisma wrote:
| future of humanity btw.
| keeda wrote:
| Anecdote, but I've never been able to use Claude (directly)
| because their defense systems seem overly sensitive to your email
| address. I signed up for Claude using a relatively new Outlook
| email address that I set up for an independent purpose. My
| account got instabanned. Like, I couldn't proceed at all. I don't
| even know what the Claude UI looks like. All I could do was
| appeal using a Google Form.
|
| I appealed and got a standard Google Forms response. There was no
| follow-up after that. It never got fixed and I never tried
| again... plenty of free, more accessible fish out there, and
| various agents like Copilot give me access to Sonnet anyway.
|
| But now I wonder, what is it about the account that triggered
| this block. If it was because of the reputation of the account,
| how did Anthropic even know that this account was created a few
| weeks ago?
| isubkhankulov wrote:
| There are vendors like Emailage that somehow determine the age
| of email addresses. Very useful because fraudsters tend to buy
| credit cards and bank accounts, then need to complete the
| identity by registering an email address for that identity.
|
| Historically, outlook emails have been very easy for this
| compared to gmail addresses, which require phone numbers, etc.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| > because their defense systems seem overly sensitive to your
| email address
|
| You mean your email address. Mine works fine.
| coeneedell wrote:
| You made a throwaway account to say this?
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Yes. Because it's funny and I don't have any other account.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| You can't change ChatGPT email address, either, fwiw.
|
| The email I signed up for got compromised a couple of months ago
| and I ended up having to delete my entire GPT account, losing all
| my history, to recreate using a new email.
|
| It was super annoying and, out of hundreds of websites I had to
| update, only OpenAI and Anthropic wouldn't let me change my
| email. A few of them required contacting support with some sort
| of proof, but at least doable.
| cj wrote:
| Is there a way to export out of one account into another?
|
| I made the mistake of using my company provided ChatGPT account
| for non-work stuff. It was fine before the memory features came
| out. But now I'm regretting not having a separate personal one.
|
| Edit: For ChatGPT (not sure about Claude)
| https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9106926-transferring-con...
| themafia wrote:
| They should dogfood their own product and ask Claude to fix it
| for them. :|
| arjie wrote:
| It sort of makes sense. These guys were AI labs before they were
| ever web developers. They prompted me to switch to a business
| account, so I did but my business email is not my personal email
| and I promptly lost all the old chats. Well, all right then.
|
| Perplexingly, this business account is as bad as a Google
| Workplace account. It has restrictions on it that I didn't have
| when I was on my own account. As an example, I can't share chats
| outside the organization. Fine, all right then.
| pwmanager wrote:
| Same like openAI
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