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[This was originally submitted this as feedback to the SE team but they asked me to repost it here, so:]

I have a Stack Overflow (and a second Stack Exchange site) account keyed to my Google ID. I'm logged into that account in my browser, and also logged into Stack Overflow Careers; both show my correct (same) Google ID as linked (verified by clicking my email address in the header).

However when I click the "my profile" button on http://careers.stackoverflow.com/?utm_source=stackoverflow.com&utm_medium=site-ui&utm_campaign=footerlink the page says I need an invite, so I click "try Stack Overflow". To my surprise (bug #1?) this page says I must login. OK; my SE accounts have no separate login credential, only the Google ID, so I select to login using Google. The Google screen is presented & I click through but when I return to SO it reports:

"This login is new to Stack Exchange: Google ([email protected])"

...and the only button is to create a new account. Huh?

I thought I had "a Stack Exchange account" (since I had a profile page that linked/showed 2 Stack Exchange family subaccounts) but apparently I had only the SO (which includes SO Careers?) and "Board Games SE" accounts, but no overarching SE account? Is there such a distinction? Or... is this just a bug where that page doesn't correctly search up my existing SO account (since the previous page's language suggested that it would be checking for an SO account, not an SE account... only the lage page used the Stack Exchange language)?

If there is a distinction between an SE account and an SO account, perhaps at a minimum the verbiage that currently says "this login is new to Stack Exchange" should say something like "this login may have associated Stack Overflow or other accounts is not yet a full Stack Exchange account; please confirm the upgrade to a full account"?

Or if this is just a bug (the SO account should have worked and the reference to a Stack Exchange account instead of a Stack Overflow account was spurious), hopefully the SE team can fix it?

A couple more notes for anyone trying to diagnose:

  • my SO & SO-Careers sessions appear to carry over fine; it makes no difference to this scenario which product page I had logged in from; also no difference logging out & back in, or using a totally fresh browser w/o any SE login cookies
  • same behavior on Safari and Chrome
  • I do have multiple Google IDs, but I definitely selected the correct/same one in all these tests
  • once I went ahead and clicked the "create new SE account" button things do now seem to work correctly (although I'm told my SO account doesn't meet the bar to prove I'm a real programmer yet, heh :)
  • I see no difference in my profile page or other behaviors (besides the SO Careers page) since "creating" the "Stack Exchange" account. If it merged, duplicated, or otherwise monkeyed with my account I don't see any other evidence
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We are currently making changes to switch the open standard we use for authentication through Google: we are switching from OpenID to OAuth. This might create a few weirdnesses until we get it completed.

Stack Overflow and Careers have been updated, but the SO account verification on Careers (when you try creating a profile) goes through stackexchange.com, which hasn't been updated yet.

When you first login to a new Stack Exchange site, a new account is created on this specific site and is linked to your other existing accounts.

As for the message "this login is new to Stack Exchange", it means that this login is new to StackExchange.com, not the Stack Exchange network.

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  • Logical explanation, thanks. I might still recommend softening/clarifying the "this login is new to StackExchange" messaging even if the issue is transitory/temporary.
    – geewiz
    Dec 16, 2014 at 20:30

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