My OpenID provider already shut down. Is there any way for me to access my accounts?

Question

My OpenID provider decided to stop providing OpenID without warning. Is there any way to access my account, or am I SOL? I haven't been able to find any sort of support email on the StackOverflow.

Note that this question is different from the "My OpenID provider is shutting down, what do I do?" since my OpenID provider has already shut down

Answer 1

I emailed [email protected], and they answered quickly. Their answer (slightly edited):

We suggest making an account with a Stack Exchange open id. Then, email us the user IDs of the new account and the old account, and we'll merge your old username into your new one, so that you retain login credentials.

Also, if you have other OpenID providers available, we suggest providing multiple OpenIDs to prevent this from happening in the future. (That is, use your Google or Facebook account to sign in.)

Kudos to the support guys there.

Answer 2

Hopefully, you had a valid email address associated with your account. If so, you'll be able to regain access:

1. Visit /users/account-recovery on the site where your account lives.
2. Enter the email address you used on your account. If you can't remember which email you used, guess. If you have to try a few times before you get the right one, no harm done.
3. Within a few minutes, you'll get an email listing the forms of authentication you can use to log into your account. If none of them are available, never fear - there's also a "Reset Your Password" link. Even if you never had a password before, clicking it will let you create one - from then on, you'll be able to log in by clicking "log in using Stack Exchange" and entering your email address and password.

Once you've regained access, you can add a backup set of credentials by following the instructions here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/edit-credentials

If you didn't have a valid email address on your account... Or can't remember it after multiple tries... You can contact us and we'll do our best to help - no guarantees though.